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:

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

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

Step Three. 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.

Step Four. 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.

Here's an example of excellent CRAM messaging from Malaria No More.

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All best,

Katya Andresen
VP Marketing, Network for Good