Do Donors Love Facts?

Dragnet's Joe Friday nabbed a lot of criminals sticking with "Just the facts."

But do facts help fundraisers capture donors?

Jeff Brooks asks the question in Future Fundraising Now:

"Is there someone on your organization's staff (or board) who wants you to turn down the emotional content of your fundraising because they believe emotion is dishonest or manipulative? 

"Do they tell you to 'stick with the facts' because making the rational case with facts and numbers is the only honorable way to motivate people to donate?"

The answer: it depends.

Large donors love facts, small ones don't, as a recent Yale University study shows:

"Altruistic donors are more driven by the actual impact of their donation, and thus information to reinforce or enhance perceived impacts will drive higher donations. 

"On the other hand, for warm glow donors, information on impacts may actually deter giving by distracting the letter recipient from the emotionally powerful messages that typically trigger warm glow and instead put forward a more deliberative, analytical appeal which simply does not work for such individuals."

Customer Retention: Not My Job

B2B marketers spend 60% of their budgets to land customers, but only 30% to keep them, according to a recent study by Demand Metric.

The imbalance shouldn't surprise you.

It costs more to attract new customers.

But you might be surprised to learn more than half (55%) of B2B marketers spend little to nothing to keep customers.

And three in four think keeping customers "is not my job" (instead, it's the job of sales or customer support).

The disconnect handicaps all B2B companies, no matter the business model.

For those with “subscription” business models, the value of a customer is realized in installments, so profits depend on keeping customers.

In others, that value is realized after multiple, independent and relatively small purchases, so profits also depend on keeping customers.

HAT TIP: Kudos to Ann Ramsey for suggesting this post.

Going Native Nothing New

There is nothing new under the sun.

Not even new media.

NBC has replaced ads on some of its shows with content sponsored by American Express, AdAge reports.

The content comprises extra scenes with stars from the shows, with the credit card issuer mentioned before and after each segment.

Other networks plan the same move.

"Many TV networks are cutting back on commercials to appeal to younger viewers who are used to watching shows ad-free on Netflix—and to appease marketers who are concerned their messages are getting ignored amid the clutter," AdAge says.

Before CLIOs are handed out, it's worth remembering broadcasters weaved "native ads" into TV shows 70 years ago (and into radio shows earlier still).

Containers of the Past

For nearly 200 years, Americans used stoneware to keep perishable food. It was, in fact, the predominant houseware of the 19th century.

The ceramic containers were heavy and expensive to ship, so stoneware potteries cropped up everywhere to serve local markets.

But after 1913, when refrigerators were introduced, the once-ubiquitous potteries sputtered and failed.

You could say, refrigerators had a chilling effect on the stoneware business.

Today's refrigerator is, of course, the smartphone, as this week's Mobile World Congress makes clear.

And, as the event makes clear, the business without a mobile strategy today is the stoneware pottery of tomorrow.

As ad agency exec Rishad Tobaccowala says, "The future doe not fit in the containers of the past."

What's your mobile strategy?

On the Shoulders of Giants

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants."

—John of Salisbury

Two neighborhoods in my fair city, Washington, DC, take their names from giants we've all but forgotten.

Oliver Howard graduated from West Point in the 1850s and was sent to fight Seminoles. While encamped in the Everglades, he was "born again." His peers would forever after mock his piety.

An abolitionist, in 1861 Howard found himself leading Union troops at Bull Run. A year later, he lost his right arm at Seven Pines, but would return from the hospital three months later to fight at Second Bull Run and Antietam. In subsequent years, Howard led bluecoats into battle at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta and Savannah.

After the war, Howard was made commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He believed former slaves would most benefit from education, and in 1867 started Howard University in Washington.

Robert Shaw, the fair-haired son of a family of Boston abolitionists, dropped out of Harvard in 1859, uncertain how to spend his life. When the Confederate states seceded two years later, he enlisted in the Union army, soon reaching the rank of colonel.

While home convalescing from a wound received at Antietam, Shaw was tapped to organize the 54th Massachusetts, one of the North's first regiments of African American troops. Sent to South Carolina as manual labor, the regiment was soon chosen to spearhead an ill-fated assault on a Confederate fort outside Charleston.

In the attack, Shaw's exposed troops were shredded by artillery and musket fire, but their remnants managed to reach and scale the ramparts. During brutal hand-to-hand combat inside the fort, Shaw was killed.

The Confederate general in charge refused to return Shaw’s body to the Union army after the fight. To show his contempt for a white man who would lead black troops, the general tossed Shaw's body into a common burial trench. After the war, Shaw's family chose to leave their son's body there, his father remarking they couldn't wish for him better company.

While you wait in line for your latte, celebrate February 29, the bonus day of Black History Month, by Tweeting this post. Include the hashtag #ShouldersOfGiants.