Direct Response

I was reminded of recently of the truism behind Ricky Nelson’s lyric “You can’t please everyone so you gotta please yourself” when the

How does the size of suggested donations affect charitable contributions? That’s the question researchers from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business set out to answer in a recent study. Oleg Urminsky, associate professor of marketing, and Indranil Goswami, then a doctoral candidate at Booth and now an assistant professor at the University at…

I love family Christmas letters. Six-year-old Elmer is reading nearly 100 grade levels above his age. He has already secured a free-ride scholarship at the Sorbonne when he's ready for college, which will be just as soon as he finishes his school project of rebuilding a flood-ravaged village in New Guinea, using nothing but toothpicks…

What can “Where’s Waldo?”, the lovable children’s book series of the '90s, teach us about designing better page layouts? A lot, it turns out. In UX, we use different page layouts to help organize information and guide the user's eye path. The “F” pattern, for instance, is commonly used for article-heavy sites to guide the…

AB testing can take the guesswork out of optimizing your online presence and marketing efforts. Unfortunately, AB testing can also leave a lot to be desired if you don’t execute it properly. Here are three of its shortcomings—and how to avoid them...

There are two awards up for grabs—one you want to win and one you definitely don't want to win. Yes, it's time for the Radi-Aid Awards! From now until Dec. 6, the creators of the awards are asking people to vote for the best and worst charity ads of 2016—known respectively as the Golden Radiator…

A forthcoming study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, based on the psychology of sympathy, shows that small changes in the wording of a fundraising letter can increase donations by more than 300 percent. With more than a million registered public charities in the U.S., fundraising for good causes has become more difficult than ever.…

It’s a straightforward question for any fundraiser, but you’d be surprised at how difficult it can be to answer. As a donor, I usually phone up charities to give them my money. I like to speak to a human being and have the chance to ask questions if I want to. I always ask the…

I haven’t posted for a while, as the nonprofit sector loves to jam all its conferences right in the middle of the busiest time of year, apparently. (Why do we do that?) But after trips, conferences and discussions with people all over North America, I’m more convinced of one thing: I’m a bad marketer/fundraiser. OK,…

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to someone who runs one of the largest direct marketing programs in the nonprofit industry. This program is not just massive from a revenue perspective, but also from a complexity perspective. Running this program is a large job. So, I asked how she manages to keep her finger on everything. She told me about the "wall exercise"...