Fundraising Copywriter George Crankovic

Tag: ai

  • Is AI simply another ‘shiny new object’?

    Is AI copywriting nothing more than the next ‘shiny new object’ that’s grabbing everyone’s attention?

    To find out, let’s take a look at a couple of shiny new objects in the past from commercial marketing.

    For the first one, we need to go back in time to the early 2000s or so. That was the beginning of the SEO craze. Search engine optimization.

    SEO was everything. If you didn’t do it, you wouldn’t be able to market any product to anyone. And if you wanted to be a copywriter, well, you absolutely had to take one of the many certification courses on SEO copywriting that were springing up.

    Because if you didn’t know SEO, your so-called career as a copywriter was going nowhere. You’d be left behind, drowning in the wake of advancing technology.

    Looking back on those days, things seem quite a bit different today. You don’t hear much about SEO copywriting anymore. And if you bothered to get one of those SEO Copywriter certifications, it’s probably just collecting dust.

    That’s because it gradually became apparent that simply loading up advertising and marketing content with keywords produced a very predicable result.

    Copywriting that sounded like it was produced by a robot spitting out keywords. And not only keywords. The same handful of keywords over and over again.

    To anyone actually reading this copy, it seemed like the content was there for the sole purpose of delivering keywords to the search engines. Which was exactly the case. Customers recognized this too, of course. They became less and less enthralled.

    Needless to say, even though it seemed like a good idea at the time, SEO copywriting kind of fizzled out.

    Another shiny new object was the whole ‘article marketing’ craze that happened somewhere around the same time.

    The experts promised that you could market and sell anything just by publishing articles about it on sites like ezinearticles.com – which by the way doesn’t exist anymore.

    With all the initial hoopla about article marketing, ask yourself if you’ve heard much about it lately. You haven’t, for a few reasons.

    First of all, the content was mostly crap. That’s because, again, the content was seen as simply a way to deliver keywords to the search engines. And that was the problem. After you’d read a few of these articles, why would you waste time ever reading another one?

    Second, the algorithms changed. If you were an avid article marketer, your articles suddenly stopped showing up on search results, because Google changed the rules on you.

    Third, too much content! With everyone pumping out articles as fast as possible, it’s obvious that we’d reach a saturation point. How much of that stuff could people actually read?

    Which brings us to AI. And to copywriting.

    If you’re a marketing or fundraising copywriter today, you’re being told that you have one of two choices: adapt or die.

    Either you use one of the AI writing tools available – and ideally more than one – to write better and faster, or you gradually succumb to a rapidly changing climate, watching fellow copywriters die off like Wooly Mammoths, once great creatures that just couldn’t keep up.

    But there’s another problem. Let’s say you stand up and announce, “I choose to adapt!” With your hand over your heart, you pledge to use the amazing new AI copywriting tools.

    The only thing is, the nonprofits or businesses that might hire you to write copy don’t need you. They can just plug a prompt into AI, and the copy appears.

    In the nonprofit world, even tiny nonprofits with no communications department can produce donor communications by the bushelful. Appeals for direct mail, appeals for email, donor newsletters, case statements, donor acknowledgements, whatever. You can pump out content like crazy.

    And you can direct that fire hose of content at your donors, and blast them with it. Then they’ll have no choice but to give. Because you’re communicating with donors, right? Well, yes and no.

    Pumping out content isn’t necessarily communicating. Especially if your content sounds like everyone else who’s using AI.

    And especially if you’re bombarding your donors with content in the same way that the other charities they support are also bombarding them with content.

    Remember SEO marketing? Remember article marketing? Aren’t we going to reach a saturation point in fundraising with AI-generated communications?

    Sure, in the beginning, everyone is smitten with AI copywriting, just like everyone was smitten with SEO copywriting and article marketing.

    But will we end up a few years from now looking back and wondering why we didn’t realize that computer-generated fundraising appeals weren’t really the great idea that they seemed to be?

    And will we wonder why we didn’t realize that human beings don’t really love computer-generated fundraising, even though it’s cheap for the nonprofit to produce?

    The shortcomings of SEO copywriting and article marketing seem obvious now. Shouldn’t the shortcomings of AI copywriting and fundraising be just as obvious?

  • AI has gutted nonprofit telemarketing. Will it do the same to donor communications?

    If you give to nonprofits, in addition to mail and email appeals, you probably receive phone calls thanking you for your last gift and asking you to give again. In the before times, before AI, the person on the other end of the phone was a person.

    Not anymore. Now the person on the other end is an AI robot. Here’s how it goes. Your phone rings. You answer. First thing you hear is muffled voices and commotion in the background, as if the call is coming from the command center of a very busy organization. That’s all fake, of course. There’s no command center. There’s no organization. There’s not even a call center where people work. They’ve all been replaced by AI.

    Then, you hear this: “Hi this is Mike, I’m calling you about [charity name].” He launches into his spiel. “We’re a national organization working on behalf of police officers who get injured on the job.”

    You immediately think that this is of course important work. “Mike” goes on to explain that policing is dangerous, and officers are getting injured at a much higher rate than at any other time.

    All the while “Mike” is talking, he sounds conversational and even friendly. He doesn’t sound like a robot, and yet he doesn’t really sound like a human being either. Something just seems slightly off, but you can’t really put your finger on it.

    “Mike” finishes his pitch, then says, “Can I count of you for a pledge of $20?”

    You might give, but you’re thinking about it. So you ask “Mike” what the name of the charity is again. He tells you. You ask how long they’ve been running. He tells you.

    Then you ask, “Mike, what will my donation do?” Long pause. “Mike” is glitching. He tells you that the charity helps injured police officers.

    You say, “Yes, I know, but what will my donation accomplish?” Another pause. “I think it’d be helpful to look at our website at www[URL].”

    You realize that something is up with “Mike.” So you say, “Mike, are you a robot?”

    He answers that question the same way that all the “Mikes” answer. He says with a chuckle, “Why do I sound that bad today?”

    Yes, Mike, you do. After you’ve talked with a few “Mikes,” are you ever going to take a call from that nonprofit again and actually talk with them about past and future gifts? No, you won’t.

    Because the interaction with “Mike” is impersonal. Because it’s deceptive. He’s passing himself off as a human being. Because it’s devoid of any real human feeling. And above all else, because “Mike” is an AI robot and you’re a person.

    Something very similar is the case with AI-generated appeals that donors might get in the mail and in email. They’re impersonal. They’re deceptive. They’re passing themselves off as written by a human. They’re devoid of real feeling. And they’re computer generated while you’re not.

    Even worse, they’re boring. The only thing that AI can do when writing fundraising copy is provide a facsimile of all the fundraising copy it has aggregated. That means what AI is spitting out is the average, the status quo, the expected. It’s templated language.

    It’s not going to provide something new and unexpected. It’s not going to give you a breakthrough idea. It’s not going to really engage donors.

    Not only that, because it only produces what it has aggregated, the output all tends to sound pretty much the same. Which means that your nonprofit starts sounding like all the other nonprofits that are using AI.

    Sure, nonprofits can pump out lots of appeals with AI. Even small nonprofits can do that. But is it a good idea?

    Think of it from your donors’ perspective. You’re on the receiving end. Once you’ve had a few phone calls with “Mike,” you’re simply going to stop picking up the phone. Because why would you bother?

    And once you’ve read a few soul-less, Mike-like, AI-generated appeal letters, are you going to keep opening up the appeal letters and emails from that nonprofit? Why would you bother?

    Yes, AI is a new and disruptive technology. But before we get carried away with creating appeals easier, faster, and cheaper just because we can, let’s give a thought to the donors we’re creating the appeals for. And let’s ask, “How would I like it if I were the one getting fake phone calls and letters from ‘Mike’? Would that make me more likely to give or less likely?”