The Agitator

If your nonprofit is raising much money online, you’re probably doing it via "old-fashioned" email campaigns, not social media (yet). And if that’s true, here’s a blog you might want to follow … The Retail Email Blog Written by Chad White at email marketing firm ...  Read more

I don’t know what set him off, but marketing maven Seth Godin recently posted an article titled Magic beans, TV and the web. Here’s the kernel: "On the web, there are countless marketers just standing around waiting for someone to hand them the magic beans. And that’s the ...  Read more

Sometimes the best advice is pretty darn simple. That’s the case with this piece in ClickZ by Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow. He’s an expert on optimizing online conversions, but he’s making a larger point with this advice: "Don’t get caught up in the flash of Web 2.0 ...  Read more

Judging from the number of "Out of Office" bouncebacks we’re getting this week, I’m assuming that lots of folks are "at the beach." That means they’re missing Steve MacLaughlin’s (of Blackbaud) Netwits webinars this week. One a day, with these topics ...  Read more

To a communications or fundraising professional, "what is relevant" to my target audience or prospect is — or should be — the threshold question. Relevance to the receiver — not you the sender — is what determines whether your message or appeal has the remotest ...  Read more

I love this online fundraising campaign run by the Salvation Army in the Detroit region. And I also love the fact that they employ someone (that would be Michelle St. Pierre) with the title, Director of Integrated Marketing! Somebody out there gets it. This campaign was put together with e-Miles ...  Read more

No, says e-marketer Loren McDonald. Here’s an abridged list of what Loren says the successful email marketer really needs to know [with my comments from the peanut gallery]: 1. Email strategy — know how to create an email marketing plan and program that maximize the channel’s ...  Read more

Last week, The Agitator extolled the virtues of usability testing for nonprofit websites, specifically with regard to online fundraising effectiveness. Our inspiration was a substantial study with this focus by Jakob Nielsen, the guru of web design. In case you need further convincing ...  Read more

Many thanks to Abny Santicola at Fundraising Success mag for pointing us to the latest usability testing on nonprofit websites by design guru Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen is the best at this. His methodology is to observe in realtime how visitors actually use websites, read e-newsletters, etc. I wish ...  Read more

That’s the question asked by Steve MacLaughlin, Director of Internet Solutions at Blackbaud, in a recent blog post. He’s talking about the fact that, on average, online fundaising appeals get less than a 1% response rate … indeed, the average is less than 0.2%. Steve looked at ...  Read more