Emotional messaging works; rational messaging hurts

Anybody who knows what they're talking about will tell you: emotional appeals work better in fundraising than rational appeals. Yet we keep churning out low-emotion fundraising, because too many of us simply find that fact unbelievable.

Want it in writing? Here's a study of emotional appeals in advertising, reported in the Neuromarketing blog: Emotional Ads Work Best. It's a large study of print ads that compared the profitability boost connected to ads that had purely emotional content with those that used rational content and those that used both.

The findings were startling. The emotional ads did about twice as well as the rational ads. The mixed ads were in the same ballpark as the emotional ads, but it appears that rational content cost them effectiveness.

(It's not clear to me what these percentages measure. Go see the study.)

Why does emotional messaging work better than rational messaging?

[The study] attributes this split to our brain's ability to process emotional input without cognitive processing ... as well as our brain's more powerful recording of emotional stimuli.

This is very hard for a lot of people to believe. Probably because our own emotional decisions seem to us to be rational decisions. That's an illusion, and a terrible thing to base your fundraising strategy on.

The more, and more effectively, you can grasp this simple (but also complex) truth, their better your fundraising will be.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, advertising, emotion

Comments

[Jeff Brooks]

Mal --

I don't think an emotional message is automatically a shallow sob-story with no substance. It can be, and too often is. But we can choose to make emotional pitches that are rich and full and true and real.

Likewise, rational messages can be specious and misleading (just look at political discourse these days), but they don't have to be. In both cases, it's a matter of how it's done.

[Mal Warwick]

Jeff --

I'm one of those who don't (quite) believe this.

To clarify: I'm sure the study's conclusions are correct as far as they go. But the study doesn't go far enough.

This is a short-term perspective on fundraising. And, as you know full well, fundraising is a long-term proposition. It's not enough to keep tugging away at the heart-strings if you seek to build strong, lasting relationships with your donors.

First, there must be a rational side to the case for giving. Lots of donors will eventually spurn a cause that never has anything credible to say about its track record.

Second, it's important to go beyond the strictly emotional and venture into spiritual territory as well, appealing to the altruistic side of donors' personalities -- what Abraham Maslow called self-actualization. You need to touch on those universal themes that reach the depths of donors' motivation.

In fact, I'd go even further. I believe that oversimplification -- usually expressed as a purely emotional pitch -- is one of the causes of declining response rates in direct mail fundraising. Donors are smarter than most of us take them for.

A sob story may work today. But it's far from enough to keep a donor in the field for year after year.

[Jeff Brooks]

Good and interesting point, Brad. Seems like a common nonprofit response is to make it even worse by messaging semi-emotional and semi-rational messages on these tragedies. Not enough of either one.

[Brad Bell]

Apparently the same phenomenon causes problems getting governments to act to prevent genocide.

By communicating the huge numbers of people murdered, we switch people from the possibility of having an emotional response (and acting on it). Instead, it becomes possible for people to rationalize the 'impossibility' of acting.

There is a horrible paradox to be overcome: governments will only act if they are seen to be acting 'rationally' rather than 'emotionally.' They will only respond to big numbers. But big numbers ensure they won't respond.

Reference:
"If I look at the mass I will never act": Psychic numbing and genocide
http://journal.sjdm.org/jdm7303a.pdf

[Mark Horoszowski]

This is a great post - thanks for sharing! In addition to the Neuromarketing blog, the book 'Made to Stick - Why some ideas survive and others die' highlights a similar takeaway. Messages have MORE staying power if they tap into people's emotions. Other key components to make messages stick include Simple, Unexpected, Concrete and Credible. Stories are also a great way to communicate your messages.