A compelling message can generate fundraising success even with modest marketing budgets. But when people are bombarded with thousands of messages a day, how do you make sure your messages rise to the top?

There are four components to a great message: connecting with an audience based on their values, rewarding your audience, asking for a specific action to get that reward, and making it memorable.

Remember this with the mnemonic device CRAM, and these four easy steps:

 

  1. Connect to things your audience cares about: saving time, feeling good about themselves, feeling powerful, etc.

  2. Identify and offer a compelling reward for taking action: Remember that good rewards are immediate, personal, credible and reflective of audience values.

  3. Have a clear call to action: Good actions are specific, feasible and filmable (in other words, easy to visualize doing). They should also measurably advance our mission.

  4. Make it memorable: What makes something memorable? It's memorable if it's different, catchy, personal, tangible and desirable. But a word of caution: memorable elements should always be closely tied to our cause. Think of all the advertisements that were so funny or memorable that you told a friend about them, but when asked what product the ad was for, you couldn't remember.