I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve had to learn a lot of hard lessons. Nonprofit fundraising isn’t always easy. There are many rules and guidelines that industry pros have learned through expensive testing over decades. When you learn these lessons, some come from your ...
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Whether you send a thank you video, a note of gratitude, a welcome gift, a thank you email, or other creative way to thank the donor for their donation, you need to communicate in a specific way to have the biggest impact on your donor. ...
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A great subject line can be the difference between catching the recipient’s attention to open your email or to be unceremoniously tossed into the trash or simply ignored. What makes a subject line stand out? It needs to be concise. The best subject lines are between ...
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Do you have someone who edits out fundraising best practice from your appeals? Someone who doesn't like the urgency, postscripts, hyphens, folksy language, or handwritten notes? Is your fundraising suffering because of it? In episode 7, Jeremy answers a question from Julia about how to handle an Executive Director who doesn't understand fundraising and is undermining her efforts.
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When it comes time to ask for donations, remember that everyone has different reasons for giving (or not giving). By understanding the concept of "the premium," you'll be better equipped to appeal to potential donors' individual needs and motivations—which will ultimately lead to more successful fundraising campaigns.
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Direct mail is not dead. Far from it, direct mail still performs well if you have a good strategy behind it. Many nonprofits are transitioning more investment into digital but aren't seeing the return in email that they've seen in direct mail. Today, we're going to talk through the five Cs of successful email appeals, then we have a question from Marcy about why her emails don't perform as well as her direct mail does.
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Videos are a powerful relationship building tool. A technique that can help your nonprofit quickly begin building a relationship with your donor is to create a personalized thank you video. This creative way of expressing gratitude to your donor communicates how much you care. There ...
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Karen's organization has a partner who offered them a list of 25,000 email addresses. Her boss wants to just add them to their email service provider, but Karen doesn't agree. In episode 5, Jeremy gives Karen advice as to how to answer her boss and what to do with the opportunity.
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Creating a sense of urgency in your appeal messaging will help move readers to become donors. Think this is a trick that no longer applies? Consider the case of two nonprofits reaching the same potential donor. If the first nonprofit conveys a sense of urgency ...
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How does email design impact response in your emails? Often there are conflicting answers on blogs as different organizations experience different results when they change factors in their email marketing. In episode 4, Jeremy explores a question about graphics vs text emails and how you can test to determine the right factors to improve response for your nonprofit emails.
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