L. Gordon Crovitz on what “big data” has wrought: “Voters need to develop buyer-beware habits. The era of politicians saying the same thing to all voters is over. Campaigns aim to tell voters exactly what each wants to hear: data-driven pandering.”

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There’s a powerful force keeping your supporters from giving you money online: friction.

Tim Kachuriak, Dan Gillett, and I will tell you how to identify friction and how to limit its effects on April 8 at the Association of Fundraising Professionals 2013 International Conference in San Diego.

Here’s the event description:

Friction can be described as anything that causes psychological resistance to a given element on a web page. And if you took a good look at your online donation page, you’ll find it is riddled with it. This entertaining workshop will help you to identify the donation-killing friction on your web site and implement strategies to limit it.

How has friction limited your online fundraising?

It may work for a campaign, but it’s not the way to build a long-term financial relationship with someone: “Using digital analytics, Team Obama was likewise able to squeeze every last cent out of supporters in ways unimaginable only four years ago.”

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Is this much more than a gimmick at the moment?

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The Obama campaign succeeded online in part by taking an obvious step. They tested:

Any time you received an email from the Obama campaign, it had been tested on 18 smaller groups and the response rates had been gauged. The campaign thought all the letters had a good chance of succeeding, but the worst-performing letters did only 15 to 20 percent of what the best-performing emails could deliver. So, if a good performer could do $2.5 million, a poor performer might only net $500,000. The genius of the campaign was that it learned to stop sending poor performers.

I wouldn’t call it genius, but too few marketers do it.

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