9 Nearly Free Volunteer Retention Tactics Hardly Any Nonprofits Are Using For nonprofits, your volunteers are like the loyal customers a business comes to rely on. And volunteers can leave in much the same manner as customers – without a word. Your best volunteer ever can pull a Keyzer Soze with no warning. Like that, […]
Fundraising & Copywriting Blog
“Help! My Nonprofit’s Home Page Stinks!”
“Help! My Nonprofit Home Page Stinks!” 12 Home Page Do’s and Don’ts for Every Nonprofit that Wants to Put Donors and Website Visitors First I’ve got good news: You’re not alone. I’ve got better news than that: There’s help. If your nonprofit is like most others, your home page isn’t just failing to get the […]
15 Reasons Why People Give to Charity that Will Spark Wildly Successful New Fundraising Ideas
Top 15 Reasons Why People Give to Charity that Will Spark Wildly Successful New Fundraising Ideas Is Your Nonprofit Appealing to All Your Donors’ Motivations for Giving? Lots of people give to charity. And many of those people love it. It’s important to keep that in mind, because fundraising is hard. But contrary to what […]
How to Build Trust With Donors
How to Build Trust With Donors Much is made in some circles about vetting charities before donating to them.Sites like Charity Navigator are often put forth as places to go so you can verify a nonprofit is for real. Articles like this one (as is typical, not written by fundraising professionals) cite statistics like “35% of people don’t trust […]
Why You Should Ignore 90% of Email Survey Data
Why You Should Ignore 90% of Email Survey Data Send Emails Based on the Data that Matters – Actions and ROI Many nonprofits and businesses go looking for email survey data to get answers to questions like these: How long should our emails be? How many emails should we be sending? Should we do just […]
How Many Emails Should My Nonprofit Be Sending?
How Many Emails Should My Nonprofit Be Sending? You already know what the answer is, right? Yep. Your worst fears are confirmed. The answer for how many emails your nonprofit should send is, “It depends.” Gaaa! Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get real about email frequency. First – the bad news. […]
5 Fundraising Auction Failures – Real Case Study
Fundraising Auction Failures: How One Nonprofit Bungled Their Auction to the Tune of Losing $100,000 Fundraising auctions that are worth the effort need to do more than just make some money. They need to collect all the money people showed up expecting to give. Don’t miss that point. People come to fundraising auctions expecting […]
Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp – 7 Reasons CC Beats the Chimp
Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp Why Constant Contact is Seven Bananas Better than Mailchimp I do a lot of email marketing and copywriting. I’ve worked on ongoing campaigns, one-off emails, standalone series and autoresponders. Along the way, I’ve used a number of email platforms. Two of the biggest ones are Constant Contact and Mailchimp. As email […]
The Ultimate Fundraising Case Study – Idea-Packed Fundraising Book
The Ultimate Fundraising Case Study Is Here! New Book Asks: Is Your Nonprofit Ready to Stop Figuring All This Out On Your Own? Read 5-Star Review Here! #TheUltimateFundraisingCaseStudy Good case studies have immense value. They tell a story of what someone else has done to solve a problem or achieve a goal. If you’re trying […]
9 Fundraising Event Mistakes That Will Cost You Thousands
9 Easy-to-Avoid Ways to Fumble Money Your Donors Want to Give You at Fundraising Events Maximize Your Fundraising Event Donations by Steering Clear of These Pitfalls The size of your event doesn’t matter. It can be a six or seven-figure annual fundraiser, or a small-time 5k race or baking contest. Fundraising event mistakes can cost […]
Are Your Emails Too Long? Email Length Myths Busted.
Is My Email Too Long? Is My Email Too Short? What’s a Good Length for Email Marketing?? Answer: Your Emails Should be As Long As They Have to Be to Get the Click Email Case Study – Scroll Down to See Some REAL Data! Don’t buy into the myth. Shorter is not better. Now, don’t […]
Putting Lead Generation In Its Place
An Internet Marketing Lead Generation Ecosystem Lead generation is an online marketing term that’s become part of the lexicon. But what is it? And how do you do it? For small and mid-sized businesses especially, it seems like some new system or strategy for generating leads comes out every week. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. […]
Part 2: Yelp Business Reps Do Not Understand Online Marketing – A True Story
3 Lessons from Yelp’s Business “Service” Let’s take a look at the three areas I highlighted at the start. (If you missed Part 1 of my Yelp Marketing Saga – find it here) Lesson 1: Customer service: “Here’s Your Rotten Fruit. Please Come Again” Businesses die if they don’t sell. And they don’t sell if […]
My Yelp Marketing Fiasco – How Not to Treat a Customer
How Not to Treat a Customer: My Yelp Marketing Fiasco Plus: Why You Can’t Do True Direct Response Marketing on Yelp, and other Tips for Businesses Considering Yelp This is not a Yelp-bashing article. In fact, reading this will teach you a lot about marketing, as well as give you a heads-up about Yelp marketing […]
Part 3: Should My Business Use Yelp? It Depends What Kind of Business You Have
Should My Business Use Yelp? Decide for yourself after reading this final installment of my Yelp marketing story. Read part 1: How not to treat a customers and 3 Big Promises Yelp will give you Read part 2: The first 2 marketing lessons you can learn from my Yelp experience Lesson 3: Targeted Direct Response […]
How to Pay Your Copywriter: 5 Reasons Fixed Price Beats Hourly
5 Stress-Reducing and Profit-Producing Reasons You Should Pay Your Copywriter Per-Item and Not Hourly Are You a Chokepoint or an Express Lane? Smart businesses and nonprofits use copywriters to help market their products and services, capture new leads and prospects, and keep their customers engaged. Some have in-house writers, and others farm these tasks out […]
Should You Be Doing Content Marketing? 3 Questions You Must Answer First
Should My Business Be Doing Content Marketing? Plus: Learn the ‘Tool Behind the Content’ Most Experts Forget to Mention You hear about it all the time. This thing called ‘content marketing.’ You feel that pressure from the pit in your stomach when you see your “most recent” blog entry sitting there – the same one […]
Learn Direct Response Marketing from ‘Better Call Saul’
‘Better Call Saul’ About Direct Response Advertising In case you missed it, a beautiful example of the clash between direct response advertising and traditional methods aired in Episode 3 of the second season of the Breaking Bad spinoff TV series – Better Call Saul. Though he changes his name at some point to Saul Goodman […]
The Overlooked Reason for zulily’s Slide
Zulily’s Sale to QVC Reveals the Failure of This All-Too-Common Web Marketing Tactic Why zulily failed: Your daughter’s feet have outgrown her shoes again. You toss her old shoes in the hand-me-down basket, and wonder where the next pair will come from. You heard about zulily’s awesome selection of kids clothing and low prices, […]
SEO Is Not Dead
It’s an Essential Part of Doing Business Online Humans seem to enjoy declaring things dead. Maybe we like to feel like we “called it.” In the past, it was rock. Disco. God. Quality feature films. And the latest addition to this list? SEO. (How can you use SEO to grow your business or nonprofit? Here’s […]
