Secret to Successful Direct Mail Campaign
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Did you know that 40% of all giving happens in the month of December? A thoughtful and well crafted year end appeal can help increase the revenue your organization generates during the height of this year’s giving season. Whether you have your planning underway or have yet to begin, join Giving Tree’s Amy Schiffman, Lizzy Sternberg and Lisa Sheridan to learn best practices in preparing for and maximizing the return on your direct mail campaign. Learning Objectives: The webinar will focus on campaign planning and execution in the following areas: Timeline creation List preparation and expansion Messaging and content Design and layout of collateral Personal notes Printing, mail house and postage e-campaign Preparing your team and resources Acknowledging donors and notifying your team Time will be given for a lively Q&A session. About the presenters: Amy Schiffman Since founding Giving Tree Associates in 2008, Amy Schiffman has helped her clients to raise tens of millions of dollars via public and private funding sources. As a principal of the firm, Amy manages annual, capital and endowment campaigns, facilitates board leadership development and solicitation training workshops, builds strategic plans, develops communication strategies, and recruits professional leadership. Lizzy Sternberg Lizzy Sternberg joined Giving Tree Associates in 2009 and plays a pivotal role in revenue development and strategic planning for Giving Tree clients. Her expertise in event planning, annual campaign management, volunteer leadership and training, software implementation and data management allows her clients to build successful strategies and exceed fundraising goals. Lizzy is Giving Tree’s in-house expert on donor and event management software and has successfully transitioned dozens of clients to new platforms. She also has strong experience leading the fundraising assessment process and partnering with GTA principals on campaign planning. Lizzy supervises the firm’s Associate Consultant team with a strong client-based approach to project management. Lisa Sheridan Lisa Sheridan joined Giving Tree Associates in 2012 and specializes in event management, database research and implementation, data configuration, board recruitment and annual campaign management. Lisa’s guidance allows clients to build the sustainable infrastructures, processes and strategies to successfully meet and exceed their fundraising goals. Lisa collaborates with volunteers and staff to execute campaign strategy and mentors new members of the Giving Tree team.
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Secret to Successful Direct Mail Campaign
- 1. The Secret to a Successful Direct Mail Campaign 10/30/14 1pm EDT The presentation will begin shortly.
- 2. Before We Get Started 3 This presentation is being recorded! The recording and slides will be emailed to you later this afternoon. Please chat in any questions for our guest. We will answer them in the formal Q&A session at the end of the presentation. For higher-‐quality audio, please dial in by phone.
- 3. 3
- 4. Today’s Guests 3 Amy Schiffman Lizzy Sternberg Lisa Sheridan
- 6. Giving Tree Associates •Who we are
- 7. Giving Tree Associates •Who we are •Intro to Today’s Webinar
- 8. Tip #1
- 9. Tip #1
- 11. Create a Timeline •When to begin
- 12. Create a Timeline •When to begin •What to include
- 13. Create a Timeline •When to begin •What to include •How to determine timing
- 14. Prepping for Your Timeline
- 15. Prepping for Your Timeline •Staff review and preparation
- 16. Prepping for Your Timeline •Staff review and preparation •Mail house or print shop
- 17. Prepping for Your Timeline •Staff review and preparation •Mail house or print shop •Manual coordination
- 18. Prepping for Your Timeline •Staff review and preparation •Mail house or print shop •Manual coordination •Personal notes
- 20. Tip #2 Messaging and Content
- 22. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize!
- 23. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging
- 24. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging •Tell a story
- 25. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging •Tell a story •Include a photo
- 26. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging •Tell a story •Include a photo •Make a direct and specific ask
- 27. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging •Tell a story •Include a photo •Make a direct and specific ask •Blog post on messaging and content
- 29. Show Your Impact Prove Their Dollar Matters
- 30. Messaging and Content •Personalize, personalize and personalize! •Targeted Messaging •Tell a story •Include a photo •Make a direct and specific ask •Blog post on messaging and content
- 31. Tip #3
- 32. Tip #3 List Preparation and Expansion
- 33. List Preparation and Expansion
- 34. List Preparation and Expansion •Segmenting your list
- 35. List Preparation and Expansion •Segmenting your list •Adding names
- 36. List Preparation and Expansion •Segmenting your list •Adding names •Updating and/or cleaning data
- 37. List Preparation and Expansion •Segmenting your list •Adding names •Updating and/or cleaning data •Sort list by leadership contact
- 38. Tip #4
- 39. Tip #4 Design and Layout
- 40. Design and Layout •Update your letterhead
- 42. Design and Layout •Update your letterhead •Customize your pledge cards
- 45. Design and Layout •Update your letterhead •Customize your pledge cards •Include personal notes
- 46. Tip #5 Postage
- 47. Postage
- 48. Postage •Nonprofit postage permit
- 49. Postage •Nonprofit postage permit •USPS nonprofit prices here
- 50. Postage •Nonprofit postage permit •USPS nonprofit prices here •First Class mail
- 51. Postage •Nonprofit postage permit •USPS nonprofit prices here •First Class mail •Standard mail
- 52. Postage Type of Postage Minimum Number of Pieces of Mail Expected Delivery Time Total Expected Cost Based on 1,000 pieces First Class 500 2-4 days $406 Standard 200 7-10 days $279 Nonprofit 200 7-10 days $161
- 53. Postage Type of Postage Minimum Number of Pieces of Mail Expected Delivery Time Total Expected Cost Based on 1,000 pieces First Class 500 2-4 days $406 Standard 200 7-10 days $279 Nonprofit 200 7-10 days $161 •Learn more about applying for a nonprofit postage authorization here
- 54. Postage
- 55. Postage •Weigh a sample of your mailing before purchasing postage
- 56. Postage •Weigh a sample of your mailing before purchasing postage •Blog post on determining your postage needs
- 57. Tip #6 Printing and Mailhouse
- 58. Printing and Mailhouse •Do your homework: get quotes
- 59. Printing and Mailhouse •Do your homework: get quotes •Assembling the mailing: in-house vs. mailhouse
- 60. Printing and Mailhouse •Do your homework: get quotes •Assembling the mailing: in-house vs. mailhouse •Blog post on printing and mail house
- 63. E-campaign
- 64. E-campaign •Assemble an e-blast version of the direct mail piece with slightly different content
- 65. E-campaign •Assemble an e-blast version of the direct mail piece with slightly different content •Link to the donation page
- 66. E-campaign •Assemble an e-blast version of the direct mail piece with slightly different content •Link to the donation page •Use of images
- 67. E-campaign •Assemble an e-blast version of the direct mail piece with slightly different content •Link to the donation page •Use of images •Test your eblast
- 68. E-campaign •Assemble an e-blast version of the direct mail piece with slightly different content •Link to the donation page •Use of images •Test your eblast •Create a plan for your leadership to share with their networks
- 69. Tip #8 Prepare Your Team and Resources
- 70. Prepare Your Team and Resources
- 71. Prepare Your Team and Resources •Prepare staff for calls and questions
- 72. Prepare Your Team and Resources •Prepare staff for calls and questions •Prepare the database
- 73. Prepare Your Team and Resources •Prepare staff for calls and questions •Prepare the database •Build an easy-to-run report for updates to leadership
- 74. Tip #9 Acknowledgments and Giving Thanks
- 75. Acknowledgments and Giving Thanks
- 76. Acknowledgments and Giving Thanks •Acknowledgments vs. giving personal thanks
- 77. Acknowledgments and Giving Thanks •Acknowledgments vs. giving personal thanks •Timely acknowledgment and personal thank you outreach
- 78. Acknowledgments and Giving Thanks •Acknowledgments vs. giving personal thanks •Timely acknowledgment and personal thank you outreach •Who to include in the thank you process
- 79. Questions?
- 80. Thank you for joining today’s webinar. Please contact us with any questions: Amy Schiffman amy@givingtreeassociates.com Lizzy Sternberg lizzy@givingtreeassociates.com Lisa Sheridan lisa@givingtreeassociates.com www.givingtreeassociates.com
- 81. Free educational resources » •Daily blog post •Weekly webinar •Downloadables •Nonprofit Wrap-‐Up •Bloomerang TV https://bloomerang.co/resources
- 82. https://bloomerang.co/resources/webinars Next (free!) webinar: From Resistant to Resourceful: A Collaborative Approach to Engaging Your Board in Fundraising Kirsten Bullock, CFRE, MBA 11/6 -‐ 1pm eastern
Editor's Notes
- AMY
- AMY Introductions, roles Firm background (6.5 years, team of 8, all things fundraising and board development: annual, capital and endowment campaigns, focus on major gifts and strategic campaign development) Experience with direct mail How many of you have some direct mail experience? How many have none? How many joined this webinar because you have a direct mail project planned for the near future? Direct mail is one the key tools we use to communicate with and solicit our donors. Some of us are sending thousands of pieces each year – and if this is the one chance(or maybe two to three mailings) to speak to our donors, share gift impact and craft a personalized message, we’d better take the time to do it right. Here are nine tips that every development professional should keep handy during their preparation of a direct mail appeal…. Lizzy….
- LIZZY This will help ensure that your mailing goes out just when you planned for it to and that you prioritize each step at the right time Before each FY begins make sure you have a targeted drop date for any direct mail you plan on sending and If you don’t have a calendar of fundraising efforts for your FY, put one together and include all of your events, appeals, direct mail pieces, deliverables and note to start thinking about a specific direct mail time line months before you need it to be sent
- LIZZY So how do you create a timeline for your direct mail piece? Begin by working backwards – when do you want your direct mail piece to drop and what is realistic for your organization? For example, if you’re thinking about your year end appeal, Consider whether or not you want your community to receive this before or after thanksgiving. Delivering your appeal the week of thanksgiving might mean it gets lost in a pile of mail in the midst of holiday preparation so make sure you are thinking about things like this when you set a drop date Make sure your intentional about when it arrives on your donors’ doorsteps; The last thing you want is to put your staff’s time and energy into a beautiful direct mail piece and have it drop at the wrong time Next I’m going to talk about what tasks to include in your timeline and how to determine how long it will take
- Every detail should be on this timeline and if you stray from it that is ok, but it will ensure you don’t leave any stone unturned and once you’ve put it together it can be easily replicated for future direct mail appeals So make sure, and don’t underestimate, the time it will take to do simple tasks like: Preparing the list of people who will receive the mailing Getting quotes from printers and mail houses Creating the letter and its messaging Putting together a pledge card and anything else you might need for collateral and something that’s often overlooked is having all of the right staff have time to review the the letter and collateral And be realistic about your time frame for these. Know yourself and know your team. Just because something might only take you a few hours doesn’t mean it will get done overnight. There will always be something else to prioritize so think about your workflow so that you can build in enough time to get things done You also want to think about whether you will be using a print house to prepare the mailing; or if you’re doing the work in house If you’ll be doing it in house, make sure you build in some extra time for printer errors and manual coordination Think about how many staff you have to help assemble and if you need recruit volunteers to help You’ll also need to include time for your board and staff to include hand written personal notes for appropriate constituents – I’ll speak more to the importance of personal notes in a few slides, but there are two ways you can go about coordinating these efforts: One, you can ask staff and lay leaders to come in for an evening and sit around your conference table for a few hours. You can feed them dinner and assign out notes that night Two, you can be a bit more strategic about your note writing and assign personal notes to the right relationship owners before the mailing goes out. Then make sure that each person’s letters are fully ready to be mailed once the personal note is popped in and deliver them to each individual. This would be my preference and recommendation, but in order to do this you’ll need to be more organized and take some time prepping your list, which I talk about in tip number 3 coming up
- LIZZY Messaging and content will be one of the most important aspects of your direct mail appeal – make sure you stay on brand and communicate your message in a professional and emotional way. Make sure your letter is talking directly to your audience and that is not a variance on the same letter you sent last year. You also probably don’t want to send one letter to every one in your database – targeted messaging is proven to be very powerful and effective – I will get to this in a minute
- LIZZY Personalize, personalize, personalize – we cannot stress this enough. Make sure the letter is personalized to each constituent – do not say greetings, or dear friend – let them know you know who they are and that you care and if you don’t know who they are fake it and you can do this by including personal notes. Make sure you include personal hand written notes on as many letters as possible, however, the quality of the note and who it is written by is better than the quantity. If you are sending thousands of letters each year, it’s not necessary that each letter you send has one, but think about the most important constituents (aka your donors, key volunteers, relationship builders in your organization, etc.) and be aggressive, but realistic about the number of assignments you hand out. Include your board members and staff in this process to make it more meaningful and manageable and think about who holds the best relationship with your donor. Here are some handy tips to make this easier on your team: Ask your board president to write notes for everyone on your board and development committee Ask your board and development committee to write notes for anyone whose names they submitted to you for the mailing, which I will get to this during the next tip Ask staff members who have relationships, but might not be on the development team, to pitch in and write 50 notes Try and include all current and frequent donors in this list and make sure everyone on your development team is writing a fair amount of notes Every single one of my clients has increased the return on their mailing by including personal notes. When we go back to look at who made a gift it’s almost always 90% of those who received hand written notes. Along with personalization comes targeted Messaging - Like I mentioned earlier, you probably don’t want to send the same letter to everyone in your database. If you are, you should probably take a step back and think about your specific constituent groups and who can be better targeted For example, if you’re a University think about your alumni, parents of students, grandparents, teachers, general donors, etc. You might send a nostalgic letter to your alumni that reminds them of being on campus; for parents you might want to include a picture of students with a note about the impact their dollar has on current educational programs Don’t underestimate the power of targeted messaging – research shows that segmented mailings are more successful/yields better results; Next, make sure you tell a story by showing your constituents who is impacted by your mission Your goal is to get your reader to read past the first sentence or two I like to do this by having the letter come from someone who has benefited from your organization
- LIZZY Here’s an example of a strong opening line and a letter that is written from the perspective of a family who was helped by an organization Dear Samantha, On October 2, 2014, our son, Ben, was 151 days old and 151 was the number of days that he had spent in the NICU at Children’s Hospital. This line makes the reader want to know more about Ben and his family. How many of you want to know more about Ben and this organization? I hope you’re all shaking your heads. Fundraising is all about storytelling and that’s how we help people feel connected to our organization and mission and what we do Now that you’ve grabbed your reader, you’ll want to show them the impact you have with hard facts
- LIZZY Use statistics that are important in showing the relevance and importance of your organization and make sure they stand out in the letter and aren’t buried away in a lengthy paragraph 52% of families with babies in the NICU are on medicaid and 100% of them are using our services – this tells me that your program is needed and effective Then show them how their dollars are being translated to make your services happen $300 supports one family in the NICU at Children’s Hospital for one month – this tells your donor what they need to do to help your organization succeed
- LIZZY Now once you’ve told the story in a powerful way, make a direct and specific ask so your community knows why they’re receiving this letter and what they need to do. Specifically state that you’re asking them to support your campaign and then include an ask amount on the personalized pledge card so it does not get lost in the letter. The letter is the call to action and the pledge card is the vehicle that will make it easy for them I will talk about how to personalize pledge cards in a few more slides This brings me to our next tip#3 – List preparation and expansion, but before I move on I also wanted to note a Giving Tree blog post specifically talks about messaging and content; we’ll be sending this PPT out after the webinar so that you have access to all of our materials;
- LIZZY List preparation and expansion could arguably be the most important part of the direct mail process You want to ensure that the right people are on this list and the letters you are sending are intentional Don’t underestimate how much time you or your database manager will need to prepare this list
- LIZZY Like I just mentioned, targeted messaging is proven to be more successful so in order to target the right groups you’ll need to segment your lists – Be sure that whoever manages your database has updated and flagged constituent information recently so all of your information is up to date. To illustrate this let’s go back to the University example I just used Every year a group of students become alumni – so make sure they are listed as such; same with parents – have you updated the list since the year began? What if you have an alumni that is now also a parent of a current student? These are important groups to track and flag in your database. And if you haven’t thought about how to accurately track this information, sit down with your team and come up with a game plan. This data can also tell you how to target your messaging and where your populations lie so it is very important that you are doing this There are three ways that list preparation and expansion are going to increase the return on your direct mail piece each year: The first is through list expansion/adding constituents to your database – make sure your board of directors and development committee members are submitting names, addresses and emails to your list each year The second is through using your data effectively – ask for an increased gift from every donor you are sending a letter to. No one will remember what they gave to your organization last year, but you can remind them by making sure pledge cards include a line about their last gift and asking for an increased one. With this tactic you will almost never get a decreased gift, but without it it’s a 50/50 chance that your donor will give more or less I will show you an example of what this looks like in design and layout The third is personal notes, which I discussed when talking about personalizing your mailing. This personal touch will go a long way and every single one of my clients who has implemented this will tell you that it helped increase their direct mail appeal Another part of list preparation and expansion, is making sure your data is clean, organized and up to date. Don’t get behind in gift entry and by accident send letters to a donor who might have just made their annual gift; make sure you are always updating addresses when you get returned mail or more up to date information or event registration; Sift through the list and spot check before you send off to the printer; it’s easy to mis-sort or make a last minute mistake I once had a mail house mis-sort my list and they sent over 5,000 letters to people at the wrong addresses – the donors weren’t happy and the mail house re-sent the mailing including an apology on their behalf; The last and most important point of list preparation is ensuring that your major donors and prospects are not on this list. Direct mail is for your lower level givers; it is a transactional giving relationship; Your major donors need more attention and need relational solicitation including a personal stewardship plan. The cut off will vary for every organization, but in general you’ll take your top 10-20% of donors off of this list and send them a holiday card instead; thank them for their support, write a personal note; and follow-up to meet them in person for coffee or lunch and get to know what drives them to be involved in your organization. They’ll appreciate the personal touch and become more invested in your mission and often times increase their gift. Now I will move on to tip#4 before handing it over to Lisa
- LIZZY It’s important to consider the design and layout of your direct mail piece. You want something that will catch the reader’s eye, is easy to read, and has your organization’s branding. Design and layout will also affect the cost of printing and postage so we will want to consider those factors here as well.
- LIZZY Update your letterhead.
- LIZZY Make sure your letterhead has a current list of board members and staff, correct address, current logo and branding formats. I know it sounds silly, but it’s easy to forget to update materials after a move or a rebrand and all of the sudden your sitting on 1000 pieces of old letterhead that you just sent to the mail house – be sure to have this on your check list each and every time you send a direct mail piece out
- LIZZY Customize your pledge cards. As I talked about earlier, personalization is key to the success of your campaign. All elements of the campaign should be personalized including your pledge card
- LIZZY Here’s an example we whipped together to show you the importance of personaliztion. UP in the left hand corner you will see that the pledge card has all of the contact information for your donor This way a donor knows exactly what information you have about them and if they recently moved and have their mail forwarded they can update it here In addition, the first line of the pledge card states the donors last gift and asks for an increased one. READ HERE. Even if someone didn’t get to read the whole letter, your donor knows exactly what their giving history is and they exactly what you are asking, but below they still have the choice to make a gift at any amount they choose. As I said earlier, no one will remember what they gave to your organization last year and if you don’t personalize this piece it’s just as likely that you’ll get a decreased gift as you will an increased one.
- LIZZY Here is another example of a pledge card for those of constituents who are not donors or maybe haven’t given in a few years; be sure the levels you are listing make sense for your organization. Direct mail is for your transactional givers so you shouldn’t be looking for the $5,000 and $10,000 gifts here. Make the levels attainable to this target audience so they feel their dollars are having an impact. This kind of generic pledge card you can use all year round, but if you go this route and are sending multiple direct mail pieces throughout the year, be sure to include an appeal code at the bottom. This way your database manger or gift entry associate will be able to identify exactly why the gift was made even if it comes in a few months after the appeal was sent The last piece of design and layout that I want to discuss is cost. Many of our clients worry that between the pledge cards, envelopes, letterhead and design of it all they’ll be spending a fortune on direct mail. That’s not the case at all. This pledge card we created very easily in word and make sure to talk to your print house about choosing an affordable stock. They’ll know how to pick the right stock and weight of paper for any of your collateral. Which segways perfectly into tip#5 – Postage. and I will hand it over to Lisa.
- LISA There are 2 ways to send direct mail - snail mail and electronic. Some or many of you are going to do both. For those of you sending snail mail, we're going to spend a minute talking about postage. We’ll then move on to talking about an e-campaign. For many of us, a good portion of our budget for a direct mail piece goes toward postage. We want to make sure we understand the postage options so we can maximize our budget.
- LISA Find out if you have, or should have, a nonprofit postage permit. This can make the process less expensive and more efficient if you are sending a large mailing, but it’s not right for every organization. Be sure to check the rules and regulations – there are specifications on how you can list your address and which mail house the mailing can be sent from. You can also send via first class mail or standard mail Let’s spend a minute looking at the differences
- LISA Let’s say we’re sending our direct mail piece in a #10 envelope and it weighs under an ounce (this is pretty standard). We can send in a few ways: First Class Standard Nonprofit First class To qualify for a first class presort discount we have to mail a minimum of 500 pieces Our mailing will be delivered within 2-4 days Based on 1000 pieces in a #10 envelope that weighs under 1 oz we will pay $406 Standard To qualify for standard mail we must send a minimum of 200 pieces Sometimes it’s actually cheaper to mail 200 pieces by ourselves with first class postage because of the fees we pay a mailhouse so we will want to weigh the savings benefits vs. the added cost of using a mail house here before deciding Our mailing will be delivered within 7 to 10 days Based on 1000 pieces in a #10 envelope that weights under 1 oz we will pay $279 Nonprofit To qualify for a nonprofit presort discount we must mail a minimum of 200 pieces and we must have a nonprofit authorization number from the post office. You will need to apply for this authorization several months prior to mailing so it’s something you may want to think about and put in place. If you’re working with a mail house they will most likely be able to help you with this process Expect your mailing to be delivered within 7 to 10 days Based on 1000 pieces in a #10 envelope that weighs under 1 oz we will pay $161 Learn more about applying for a nonprofit postage authorization
- LISA Weigh a sample of your mailing before printing and purchasing postage so that you know how much each piece will cost Sometimes you can make a small change to your paper stock or printing method that will keep you within the standard weight and have a big effect on the cost of postage It’s important to use your printer and mail house as partners in this process. After all, they are the experts in these areas. This leads us into our next tip.
- LISA
- LISA When choosing a printer and/or mail house, it’s important to do your homework. You’d be surprised how much costs can differ in this industry. We suggest quoting out your direct mail piece with 2-3 vendors to have a point of comparison. This will allow you to make an educated decision on who to use. Determine if you want to assemble your mailing in-house or if you want to use a mail house. As Lizzy mentioned, you will want to think about your resources in making this decision. Do you have the staff and/or volunteers to put together the mailing in house in a timely manner? If so, is this how you want to use their time? Mail houses will print addresses on your envelopes, stuff your mailing, sort and send. They will make sure that your mailing is up to standard for USPS so that it will mail smoothly and efficiently. Mail house will also be able to help you navigate your postage options including pricing and permits. You’ll have to think about personal notes in this decision as well. If you go with a mail house and need the ability to write personal notes, you may want to split your list in half by those who need a note and those who don’t before sending to the mail house. Let the mail house send any letters that don’t need a personal note. For the letters that DO need personal notes, have the mail house assemble the mailing and return it to you. From there all you have to do is insert the note, seal and send. See Erin’s blog post on printing and mail houses for more helpful hints
- LISA As we said earlier, some of you may send both a snail mail piece and an e-campaign and some folks may choose to only send an e-campaign. If you’re sending a snail mail piece we recommend that you create an e-campaign to accompany the direct mail appeal. There are 2 main reasons for this recommendation: There are likely people in your database who you have an email address for but don’t necessarily have a mailing address for. If you only send a direct mail piece, these people won’t receive anything and won’t be able to easily make a gift. For those who receive the snail mail letter, the e-campaign is a nice reminder to support the organization
- LISA I always like to learn from other organizations who do it well. As you can see, I’ve included an example of a Mother’s Day appeal from MercyCorps as it highlights some of the key facts we’re going to talk about. Your e-campaign should be short and sweet Make your message clear and succinct Make it obvious what you are asking for and easy for people to know where to click to support your efforts (yellow button is large and easy to see, it’s in a bold color which makes it stand out and it’s obvious where I should click if I want to support the organization) ALWAYS CREATE your appeal in your email marketing platform I often see organizations who take an image of an invitation they created and paste the jpeg into their email marketing platform and hit send. I STRONGLY URGE you NOT to do this. Emails from email marketing platforms that only have one image raise a HUGE red flag for spam filters. The last thing we want is for our e-campaign to end up in someone’s spam folder and take the chance they don’t see it.
- LISA Assemble an e-blast version of your direct mail piece. This should have slightly different content and formatting than the direct mail piece for a couple reasons: If you’re sending to people who also got the direct mail piece, you don’t necessarily want them to see the exact same thing twice The eblast should be short and sweet and formatted for email. This also means choosing a format that is mobile friendly – after all, we do know that most people are reading emails on their phones these days. Your call to action will be slightly different in your e-campaign since you can link people to your donation page. You will want to make the call to action obvious, direct and easy to see. Link to the donation page Link directly to your donate page, not the organization’s home page. You don’t want people to have to click through to find where to give. Make it as quick and easy on people as possible. ALWAYS TEST your donation portal. Last year I got a powerful email from an organization, one that motivated me to make a gift. I went to their website to make the gift and the donation portal wasn’t working. After trying it twice, my phone rang, I walked away and never went back. I never actually made a gift to the organization even though I had wanted to. Had their portal worked, they would have had a new donor. You don’t want to be in a position like that. Use of images Images are powerful but make sure you don’t use more than one image in your e-blast as this will increase the likelihood of your email ending up in a spam folder Test your eblast Always send yourself a test of your eblast. Eblasts look different in an email marketing platform than they do in an inbox or on a phone. View the eblast in the way your constituents will be viewing it and make sure you are happy with how it looks. Click through to make sure all of your links are linked to the appropriate places and that they work Create a plan for your leadership to share with their networks As Lizzy talked about earlier, personal outreach is extremely important in maximizing the return on your campaign Encourage your board members and leadership to forward the eblast to their contacts and include a personal note when doing so. Even if their contacts are already on the list and received the eblast, it’s still helpful for your leadership to forward as people are more likely to open the email if it comes from a friend rather than an organization. **Remember that people give to people and friends give to friends. The personal note makes it more likely someone will give.
- LISA Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time working on your direct mail piece, preparing the list, working with the printer and mail house – one of the last and most important steps is to make sure your team knows about the direct mail piece and is prepared for and understands what they will need to do once the piece hits.
- LISA Make sure your staff know what is being sent out and when and that they are prepared to answer any incoming calls and questions that arise. Prepare the database Make sure your database manager is ready to enter the incoming donations the minute the mailing arrives in your donors’ mailboxes Make sure you have the appropriate campaign, fund and appeal codes set up in your database and that your database manager knows where and how to code the gifts Build an easy to run report for updates to leadership We recommend building a report in your database before the campaign goes live so that you’re ready to run the report once gifts start coming in You’ll want to alert a board member when one of their contacts makes a gift so that they can send a personal thank you (Amy will talk more about this when she covers acknowledgements during the next tip) You’ll also want to send regular updated to your exec board, development committee and board so that they know where you stand in the campaign and where you are towards your goals
- AMY Create a thank you plan. Make sure your acknowledgements are current and ready to go If it was a board member contact, be sure to let them know that the donation came in so a phone call can be made or they can write their own note as well. Most importantly, if a large contribution or increased gift comes in, make sure the Director of Development or Executive Director knows about it and makes a personal call (more on next slide). This person might be ready to be moved off of the direct mail list and ON to the face to face list.
- AMY Who to include in the thank you process: Great way to include board and dev com members and get them more involved in the solicitation process – phone calls from board members are a beautiful way to steward a donor Gift acknowledgements should generally go out within 72 hours of receiving the gift, but the sooner the better Even if you don’t have board members or ED’s to call – make sure you add a personal touch to the thank you – a personal note is great start – might ask ED to sign and write thank you notes all thank you’s at a specific giving level and up The DoD or DA can write personal notes at the next level - this is all part of the thank you planning process – make these decisions in advance so that they do not delay the thank you process. Again – we love including lay people!
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