Good morning, reporters! The election season continues apace.
Today’s issue is more like a technique, but simple enough that I’ll call it a tool. Trusting News did an experiment on how to write your fundraising – specifically, the little bit of text next to a big button that says Donate Now.
In a sentence, or just a few words, Trusting News recommends spelling out: a) your mission, b) behind-the-scenes operations, or c) a specific value you provide to your audience. Something like this:
Over 18 weeks, these changes doubled (!) the number of clicks the donation button got in Politifact newsletters. Granted, it doubled from 0.2% to 0.44%, but that’s still a lot! Getting people to spend money is hard.
And it’s a relatively easy change to implement. The reason I’m sharing it now is because, if you want to communicate urgency, the difficulty of your work, or a clear mission, an election seems like the perfect time to do it. Find some donors, reporters!