Award Winning Blog - Agitator

UNICEF Case Study – Read By May 7

Here is a great case study from Marketing Sherpa on UNICEF’s experimentation with social media. Lots of practical info here. So far, heaps of awareness (i.e., "friends" and friends’ activity), but no discernible dollar payback. Seems like that’s the story with social media at this stage of the game. So don’t kid yourself or your […]

Learn More May 6, 2008

How Trustworthy Are You?

Nothing much gets done when trust is absent. Certainly no fundraising. So how trustworthy are you? Here’s a self-evaluation survey concocted by Charles Green, co-author of The Trusted Advisor, and a blogger on the role of trust in marketing, sales and business in general. If you take the quiz you’ll find your trustworthiness ranked against […]

Learn More May 4, 2008

Logos On The Left, Please

I wish I had more time to read research on brain functioning. I just love this stuff! Here’s a piece on how the brain processes images, and what the implications are for effective design of ads, etc. Turns out that images are processed mostly by the right frontal lobe, which gets its input from the […]

Learn More May 2, 2008

YES Or NO?

Two important articles for email marketers. The first gives cause for worry. More and more emails winding up in spam piles … nearly one out of every five permission-based e-mail messages sent to US-based ISPs lands in the junk mail folder. The second suggests how to keep your e-list clean and responsive. You don’t want […]

Learn More May 1, 2008

Building E-lists

Remember the good ‘ol days of direct mail fundraising, when if you needed names you just went out and rented or exchanged for them by the bucketloads? And if you knew what you were doing, you could get pretty decent ones. Of course in the online fundraising culture, new rules apply. [How we direct marketers […]

Learn More April 30, 2008

“I’m Agitated Alright!”

So said Kim Cubine, a principal at fundraising firm Adams Hussey, in a recent email to The Agitator. Kim, a veteran direct marketing fundraiser, was taking exception to some observations about online fundraising versus direct mail in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article. Would you like to vent, we asked? Here is her Guest Agitator […]

Learn More April 28, 2008