Why 1.3m people gave this newspaper money

I learnt recently that The Guardian newspaper has a whopping 1.3 million ‘digital members’.

These are people who regularly donate money to the newspaper - despite all the content being available for free.

So, what’s their secret?

How do they get people to voluntarily part with their cash, despite not seeing many upsides (apart from perhaps the moral high ground)?

Well, just by asking nicely!

The Guardian includes little pop-ups and messages at the end of articles on their website, asking for donations to fund their journalism.

They’re very polite, very British and devastatingly effective.

I’ve deconstructed one of these messages, identifying some of the many persuasive writing techniques they used:

It’s good, isn’t it?

Which other techniques can you spot?

And if your team needs help writing more persuasive, engaging emails, content, pitches, reports or presentations, let’s chat.