From Our Brains to Yours
Keeping the Unsubscribe Experience Positive
I hate it when organizations make it difficult for me to unsubscribe. Sometimes it takes a week for messages to stop (typically with commerical businesses). Sometimes they require me to click through on a confirmation email or worse, email them with “unsubscribe” in the subject line (never works). Regardless, by the time the emails are [...]
Please read this.
As the economy tumbles, organizations dependent on convincing individuals to part with hard earned cash or time are doing some navel gazing in an effort to find new ways to inspire customers, clients, donors, and activists. A popular topic of navel gazing is “indirect marketing” via social networks: does energy put into being fascinating on [...]
On first principles
Fair warning: this is a bit off topic – I’m not going to talk about communications or advocacy or strategy.
Like everyone else, I’ve been watching the imploding economy with a mixture of horror, dread, and morbid curiosity: what on earth can we do? What can governments do? What can individuals do? Corporations?
It’s occurred to me [...]
Fundraising and communications: Investments or expenses?
You’ve probably heard the rule of thumb that fundraising and overhead expenses should be no more than 10-20% of your overall budget. You may have heard a smaller or larger percentage, but probably in that ballpark. But isn’t laying the groundwork and communicating your purpose to build a movement as much a part of carrying [...]
The secret for growing a giant list
It turns out that delivering something of value is the secret to building a giant list of supporters, members, clients, etc. Stunning, no?
What is strategy?
I’m gearing up to teach a class on strategy for the Master of Professional Studies in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program at Georgetown University. This will be the second semester I’m teaching it.
I start the first class with a question: what is strategy? The consensus answer is generally something like, “a road [...]