You can raise larger gifts by leveraging the COMPROMISE EFFECT. ✨
Humans avoid extremes. When given a list of choices, humans will choose an intermediate option - something in the “middle.”
Mathias Ekström ran a series of experiments looking at the Compromise Effect and gift ask strings. In one study, donors were presented with only two gift ask amounts: $10 and $500, which typically represent the extremes of an ask string. Surprisingly, 90% of the donors opted to CALCULATE AND SPECIFY their gift amount, rather than selecting one of the two extremes. He calls this the (un)compromise effect.
There is a lot of nuance to this study, you’ll want to read it. Here’s a link to the abstract.
Instead of ripping apart an email or direct mail appeal, I wanted to go over 5 things with you in a short video:
✅ Subject line of choice
✅Copy on the donate button
✅The compromise effect & gift ask strings
✅Fundraising status bar (I call it a thermometer the entire time, sorry)
✅Button placement
In terms of button placement, I've pulled from 3 incredible people & sources:
- Tom Ahern: he talks about the “single most important thing” (SMIT); here’s a link to his blog post on it! KEEP SMIT - the SMIT. 😎
- Julie Cooper: when talking about button placement, “upper right, big and bright.” Love this. It stays in your head! 💎
- NextAfter: they’ve tested button vs. HTML links. As long as the link to give doesn’t make your email LOOK hard to read, it is absolutely worth testing the use of a direct link vs. a button. Think about it this way… Do you send your BFF a button or a link? Here’s a link to one of their studies.
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