From Our Brains to Yours

March 4th, 2010

Rx for a Fatigued List

Health care, midterms, stimulus, oh my! There’s a lot going on these days and maybe you’re asking a lot of your organization’s volunteers, donors, and activists. Maybe asking so much that you’re worried about “list fatigue”.

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February 12th, 2010

Email List Hygiene

Do some email list hygiene to boost your results. Check out these 3 Things for ideas on how to segment and best use your email list.

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January 28th, 2010

Get to the Point

Having shorter, clearer and more focused emails is a key to increasing your readership, click through and conversation rates.

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November 10th, 2009

Should You Start an E-Newsletter?

Last week we met with a client who’s seen tremendous success with their online newsletter, and we thought it might be time to revisit the topic. Should you launch an e-newsletter?

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October 1st, 2009

Develop Great Messages

Strategy, tactics, evaluation and measurement, may all be in place and spot-on, but if you’re delivering the wrong message it can all be for naught.  This week, three quick things to keep in mind during the message development phase of campaign and communications planning:
1. You are not your audience. Usually, neither is your organization’s staff.  [...]

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September 10th, 2009

Should you change up your (print) newsletter?

Newsletters are great tools to provide regular, updated content to your members.  Whether your content is safety tips, success stories, career advice or continuing education, newsletters can provide an opportunity to to put new content in front of members in an organized and predictable manner.
Newsletters are also hardly new.  The monthly or quarterly newsletter has [...]

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June 8th, 2009

Why say it just once when you can say it twice, or thrice

OK – I just wanted to use the word thrice in the title.  But my question still remains – why say things just once when you can say them more than once?
When trying to activate donors, members, or activists to take action, asking only once leaves a lot of potential “actions” on the table. Most [...]

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April 23rd, 2009

It’s Urgent!

If it’s Thursday… it’s time for Three Things!
On Monday, I wrote about evidence that urgency is a necessary (but not sufficient) element of any call to action. In emails and conversation since I put up that post, several people have mentioned that the prescription is all good and well in theory, but quite difficult in [...]

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March 19th, 2009

Audience Segmentation

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things. This week: three things to consider about audience segmentation.
By now it’s conventional wisdom: your audience is not a monolith, and you shouldn’t communicate with them that way. Online communications are particularly well suited to segmentation – thinking about your audience in terms of subgroups – but [...]

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March 2nd, 2009

Isn’t email sooo 2008?

Email is dead. Email is dying. Email is sick? Email might have a bit of a cough.  Every few months we have a conversation about the impending death of email.  Whether due to spam or decreased attention or too much noise, reportedly email will cease being the “killer app” of the internet any day [...]

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