Here’s a great email subject-line test, reported at 101fundraising, that shows pretty dramatically how important it is to make your fundraising about donors, not about you: It’s you, not me.
| Subject line |
Open rate |
Clickthrough |
| From Haiti to Somalia, taking action together to save lives |
31.4% | 1.5% |
| Together, our swift response has made a difference in Haiti |
35.1% | 1.9% |
| You’ve had a life-saving impact |
42.3% | 2.3% |
This isn’t unique to email subject lines. You’ll get results like this most of the time, in any media. Make it about donors, and you get more response.
The reason is very simple: They don’t give because of who you are; they because of who they are.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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