If you lose your readers at the start, you've already lost.

Life is busy and we are expected to identify, process, and prioritise millions of messages each day. To minimise over-stimulation, our brains quickly recognise similar patterns and give them less attention.

Social media has conditioned us to know that we can quickly scroll to the next snippet of something-or-another to get a chemically gratifying reward – with minimal effort on our part.

Exuberance writers understand that readers have a choice. If our copy does not earn their attention, it will not earn their consideration, their action or their donation.

We put a lot of work into the initial impression, the first moments, the words and images at the very start of a communication.

What’s that look like? It depends. It might be a reward, intrigue or a question. The start of a cracking story, something that taps into a human need, an offer that’s built around identity.

A good start is never boring.

Email is brutal. Your subject lines are absolutely essential. If you don’t get something opened, you’re doomed already. And, once a reader does open your email, you must reward them in the first ‘screen’ that they see (without scrolling). Your content has to be congruent with what they responded to in the subject line to establish trust (no deceptive or ‘false promise’ subject lines please). Ideally, you need a problem/solution/ask construct in there, and/or some compelling story-telling.

Social media: Honestly, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking Facebook, Insta, Youtube or LinkedIn, the principle applies. You have about a second to capture attention. The first thing you write (and ideally the image you use) has to be immediately attractive and ideally fresh. There is a massive volume of ‘same same’ content being spewed out by writers and AI, and you are just not going to cut through with dull, predictable or hackneyed material.

Video of any length or type, housed or displayed on any channel: Don’t make people wait for good bits. Get them in the first five or ten seconds. What’s a good bit? A gut-wrenching interview grab, a benefit for the viewer, a call to action, something with “YOU” in it. Don’t waste time with setup or intros. In fact, with video, I recommend you start with an attention- capture and then do setup/intro etc., not the other way round.

Print: A newsletter, fundraising appeal letter, case for support. Prioritise really interesting and active headlines and subheads. Don’t waste a subhead by making it passive or dull or like an editorial subhead. Rubbish like “A new beginning” or “Jason’s story” or “Did you know?” does not exactly jump out and grab your reader by the throat. If you have to write 20 subheads for a donor impact report or newsletter, make every single one of them interesting.

People will read long copy if it’s good. But good copy earns the attention of a reader from the very start.

I’ve written mostly about copy above, but copy often works in collaboration with design and imagery.

The job of the words/pictures combo is to help your readers:​

• find the point​

• understand the message/offer​

• navigate quickly and easily​

• recognise what they are being asked to do (recognise what’s clickable in an edm for instance)​

• feel confident in what to do next.

Again, you should prioritise these thing at the start of any piece.

If you want fundraising communications that donors will want to engage with, start by contacting Exuberance.