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Say "$20,000 every month", not "$240,000 this year"

Oct 8
3 min read

Updated: Oct 10

Public-domain art plate: Audubon — Rathbone's Warbler, Birds of America (1827-1838)
Rathbone's Warbler, a plate from John James Audubon's The Birds of America (1827-1838).

"$20,000 every month" beats "$240,000 this year", even though it's the same money.


The study. Researchers from Indiana, WashU, NYU and the University of Washington ran seven preregistered studies (two large field studies and five online experiments) on how companies should describe their charitable giving. It's published in the Journal of Marketing Research.


The finding. Describing a donation as a series of regular contributions rather than one lump sum improved the company's reputation, customer engagement and purchase likelihood. In a restaurant's email to 75,514 customers, the "every month" version roughly doubled click-through (0.69% vs 0.35%), according to the authors' conference poster.

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