The importance of repetition, the importance of repetition

This article from PsyBlog, about 20 steps to create the perfect persuasive message, is full of good facts for fundraising copywriters to keep in mind.  (And some that don't apply, such as the fact that people are easier to persuade when they've consumed caffeine—although maybe your e-appeals should be sent out in the morning, reaching donors while they're drinking their coffee?)

Right now I'm going to address #10: "Repetition: whether or not a statement is true, repeating it a few times gives the all-important illusion of truth."

Recent research has found that, every single day, individuals are inundated with the equivalent of 174 newspapers' worth of data!  Your message has to break through all of this informational clutter, reach the donor's brain, and inspire her to write a check.

What's more, most donors only skim the appeals they receive.  Repetition is necessary to reach your donors.

Repetition is one of the reasons behind the importance of a consistent brand.  Repeat to your donors again and again what your organization does, and how their donations make a difference.  Repeat how important they are.  Everything you want your donors to know, repeat it.

This is from a cute comic titled "9 Ways to Get People To Do What You Want:"

You can click to see the whole comic. So, what from this list applies to fundraising communications work?

• "Be charming, confident and likeable." Which organization would you rather support, the one who says "with your help, we will solve x problem," or one that says "we might be able to solve x, we'll try..." As for charming and likeable, how about that potato salad kickstarter?
  


• "At the beginning of the conversation, make the person say 'yes.'" A great example of this is petition-signing. She has already proven herself to care about the issue enough to sign the petition; now it's less of a stretch for her to donate to support it.


• "Make the person feel respected and important." Hello, donor-centeredness!
  


• "Push for a feeling, rather than something tangible." We know that most donation decisions are influenced by emotions, not logic.


• "Tap into the person's imagination." You see this a lot in fundraising messaging. "Can you imagine going to school hungry? Jimmy does..." "Imagine, Pawnee's river completely cleaned up by 2016!" Reaching people's imaginations helps make your messaging compelling.


• "Do a big favor for the other person so he or she feels obligated to do something for you." Again, you see this a lot with charities that send out mailing labels, notepads, etc., a practice that is getting increasingly controversial. (Here are more posts about using reciprocity in your communications.)


• "Challenge a person to do something, as opposed to telling them to do something." Does this remind you of the wildly-successful Ice Bucket Challenge campaign?


• "Claim that you have the person's best interests in mind." I've said it before (and I'll say it again, surely): people don't give to your organization, they give through your organization to make a difference. Make it clear that you want the same things. "With your help, we'll preserve the Pawnee Historical Museum, so you and your family can enjoy it for many years to come."

What we can learn from "the potato salad Kickstarter"

This past summer, a lot of my friends were wringing their hands about the state of the world because of the potato salad Kickstarter—a guy named Zack Brown basically raised over $55k to make potato salad. HUH? With so much wrong in the world, why did people choose to give their money to that?

This blog post has a great analysis of why this fundraiser was successful when so many are not: it was entertaining. As Kickstarter themselves put it:

"It was the reaction Zack got from all corners of the Internet: head-scratching, laughter, loud harrumphing, pure delight. And it was Zack’s graceful handling of a project that quickly became far too big to fit in a bowl."

Remember, no one owes your their eyeballs: to get people to read your message, they need to find it interesting. As the funding grew, Zack Brown created inventive stretch goals. What started out as just making potato salad became "Better mayonnaise (from the natural foods section)," "I'll do a live stream of the potato salad making," all the way up to "My kitchen is too small! I will rent out a party hall and invite the whole internet to the potato salad party."

The fundraiser initially took off because it was so unusual, and once it started to gain momentum on the internet, a lot of money came due to the bandwagon effect—people felt compelled to be part of that crazy potato salad thing.

In your messaging, be different. Be inventive, interesting, entertaining. And people will be more likely to read your words—and donate. 

First-time donors aren't donors

A donor isn't really a donor until he or she has donated a second time.

Why?  Because of all the reasons people often initially give:

• supporting a walkathon or similar
• in honor or memory of someone they care about
• sweepstakes
• "go away" money 

But, if she donates a second time, it's because she cares about the work of your organization.  So, how to get (and keep) donors more involved?

Mal Warwick's book How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters (a must-own for any fundraising communications professional) has an entire chapter devoted to creating a welcome package for your new donor, complete with examples.  In sum, keep it warm, keep it personal.  Inform the donor about the work of your organization in order to reassure him that donating was a good call, that his money is going to make a difference.

This post on SOFII features the legendary Tom Ahern.  He shows you, step-by-step, how he wrote a letter specifically aimed at those who gave gifts in memory, in order to convert them to real donors.  It is such a useful read, even if that's not exactly what you're doing.

What has worked for you to keep first-time donors "in the family"?

It's about the wants of your reader

I love Copyblogger, and I especially love thinking of ways to adapt their advice for the nonprofit world.

They discuss the importance of determining if your copy truly contains a benefit to the reader.  The example they use is that "Balance your blood sugar levels naturally!" isn't good copy because no one thinks "Gee, I need to balance my blood sugar levels naturally!"  But what people do want is to avoid the things like blindness, numb limbs, and premature death that go along with diabetes.  Therefore, better copy would focus on how to naturally avoid diabetes and its bad effects.

So how can you apply this to your own work?  Don't ask people to "save the park," ask them to save the place where they relax, kids and dogs get exercise, and neighbors meet and chat.  Don't ask your readers to donate money for food, ask them to donate money to stop folks in need being hungry.

Marketing is like gift giving—too often we give people what we think they should want, or what we want them to want.  To be effective, you have to get inside the head of your reader, figure out what they desire, and then give them that, or appeal to that. 

But HOW to craft a great subject line?

Time to talk more in-depth about e-mail subject lines.  Copyblogger has some tips for crafting good headlines, which I've adapted to help us with our nonprofit e-mail subject lines.  (Don't you love the challenge of nonprofit marketing?  Unlike traditional products and services marketing, when you're fundraising you're selling something less tangible.  You're selling the good feeling of making a difference!)

• Direct Headlines go "straight to the heart of the matter."  Something like: Our New Blog Is Up & Running.


• Indirect Headlines are more subtle, piquing the readers curiosity.  A zoo might write The Eagles Have Landed.


• News Headline-style is self-explanatory.  For example: President of Cohen-King Foundation to Receive Nobel Prize.


• The "How-to" Headline is everywhere, but can be hard to adapt for nonprofits...maybe: How To Have Your Gift Doubled, to promote a challenge grant?


• Question Headlines "must do more than simply ask a question, it must be a question that...the reader can empathize with or would like to see answered."  How Can We Stop the Violence in Chicago?


• A Command Headline tells the reader what she needs to do, such as Donate Today to Keep Livanka Park Open!  The first word should be a verb.


• Reason Why headlines explain body text that consists of a numbered list of product features or tips, such as Eleven Ways You Can Help St. Francis' School Be Even Better!


• The Testimonial Headline works "because it presents outside proof that you offer great value."  Take what someone important has said about your organization and use their words!  Mayor: "Wichita House is a vital part of our city".

Do you make this subject line mistake?

Let’s talk e-mail. I’ve seen it again and again—even done it myself when I was less experienced. You craft the perfect e-mail to your donors and supporters, taking time to make it clear, brief, and most of all, compelling. And when you’re finished, you take a moment to think of a subject line, type it in, and you’re done.

That last part is a mistake.

The entire purpose of an e-mail subject line is to get people to open the e-mail.  If someone doesn't open it, there is literally no point in that person getting it at all.  If few people open it, basically all the time you spent crafting the message will be wasted. You would be better off spending twice as long coming up with your 65 character subject line (the length suggested here) than your e-mail, which is much longer than that. Never use a subject line like "September Newsletter."

In my next post I’ll discuss specific ways to create a subject line that makes people want to click. But for now, the lesson is: spend a lot of time crafting it! Really put yourself in the reader's shoes and think about what would make her want to open it.

See you later

Hi readers, just a heads-up that I'll be taking a break from this blog for a while. I hope you're having a terrific summer!

What can you learn from Beyoncé's blog?

Last year, Beyoncé started a Tumblr. It is low on text, but full of photos of her, her family, and her adventures.

This is an amazing analysis of Beyoncé's blog and why it is so compelling (which I recommend reading even if you aren't a Beyoncé fan). What struck me about it in particular was that nonprofits could take away two useful insights from this analysis:

• The blog is authentic. You can tell that many of the photos are taken by the legend herself. It is clearly her, her family, her life, even her handwriting. 

What is your organization's blog like? For example, if you have entries written by volunteers, is it clear they are written by them, or does someone take their words and make them sound "better," sanitizing them in the process? Even photos that aren't that great lend authenticity—they say "this photo was taken by a volunteer, we don't spend your money on slick photos, but this picture captures what we do regardless."

• The blog is intimate. As a stark contrast to the heavily made-up, stylist-influenced, Photoshopped pictures of Beyoncé that one can find in magazines, here she shows a much more natural side. In many photos she's wearing little or no makeup, and lots of photos feature her doing something wacky. There are lots of pictures of her family in remote locations that are very private. This drives the viewer to feel a connection to the star. 

In order to get people to care about and, ultimately and especially, donate to your organization, they need to feel connected to it. In particular they need to feel a connection to the work. Can you use photos (or video!) that make people feel like they are there at the zoo seeing the new baby gorilla being born? That they are there with you working with kids in Central America?

Know the important difference for online writing

A post on Slate recently shared that many visitors of web pages don't scroll at all in order to see all of the content.  So something to keep in mind when you're writing for the web is that you should put your most important stuff up top.  Make it compelling enough that people will want to scroll down to keep reading!

Network For Good echoes this idea, and takes the readability concept further:

"Eye-tracking studies show that readers scan text first to see if the article is relevant to them. They typically skim the top of the page—skipping the parts that require scrolling to reach—plus any headings, images, and bold-faced terms. Effective Web pages are easy to scan quickly and pick out the main points. Put your most important information at the beginning of your article. Expand on that info with eye-grabbing elements like bold-faced subheads, captioned images, and bulleted lists."

The Network For Good article has other good points, like:

• make sure your headline makes it clear what the article is about,
• break up big blocks of text, and 
• use bulleted or numbered lists. 

As ever, our job as communicators is to make it easy on our readers.  Attention spans are even smaller on the internet.  And if your readers don't read, they won't get a chance to be affected by your compelling copy, and then they won't donate!