Direct Mail Primer

Follow these tips to improve results and keep your donors happy, engaged, and productive.

1. Donor Complaints: Listen to complaints and let the donor guide you for their particular intent (less mail, no email, etc.). However, strategy decisions involving the entire database should be driven by revenue. Mass appeal can be inferred by donor’s actions (i.e. donations).
2. When Not to Ask for a Gift: Don’t ask for funds: 1) When a donor specifically requests that you not ask, 2) When it’s not worth your money to ask and 3) When you don’t need any revenue.
3. Gift Size vs. Ask Amount: Build up to a larger ask amount.
4. Self Sufficiency vs. We Need Help Immediately: A donor that feels they are important to an organization is more likely to give and keep giving. If you give the impression that the organization does not need help, it is harder for the donor to feel that they are making a difference with their gift.
5. Importance of Thank You Letters: After the appeal letter, the thank you letter is one of the most important letters that you can send your donors. I disagree somewhat with the assertion that the first thank you letter they receive is a bad time to request a monthly commitment; it really depends on the donors that are attracted to your organization. For many donors, they feel most connected with an organization after they have given their first gift and this can be the best time to convert them to monthly donors.
6. Overall Design Strategies: Don’t let design over-rule good DM procedures.
7. Happy Faces vs. Sad Faces: Use the appropriate face that conveys the message you are trying to put forth. Happy faces can work well, if you are outlining your successes. Sad faces work best when you are highlighting the need. Because a good direct mail piece looking for a donation should be highlighting the need, more often than not, a sad face will produce the strongest response.
8. Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts: Serif fonts are more readable than sans-serif for most donors. Courier or something in the Times family offer the best readability and continue to win in font tests.
9. Personalization: If you are able to personalize the letter, then you should.
10. Emotional vs. Rational Copy: An emotional, heart-felt appeal typically works much more effectively than a rational, dollar & cents approach. In fundraising, it’s easy to start assuming that letters are "overwritten" or "verbose" or "repetitive" but that style has consistently proven most effective in tests.
11. Donor Centric Copy: Write letters for the donor, not for the organization.
12. One Person’s Story or Save the World?: People are more likely to give a gift to help a single person than to help a group of people.
13. Copy Should Focus on a Donor, Not Groups of Donors: An appeal letter should be a personal correspondence. It should be written by one individual to another individual in a personal, informal tone.
14. Building Connections with Copy: Fundraisers should not shy away from emotion, they should tell stories, and they should not over-edit and formalize texts.
15. Letter Length: Longer letters work better than shorter letters.
16. Industry Jargon in Letter Copy: Avoid it.
17. Writing About Accomplishments: Accomplishments sell. Writing about what you do means nothing to a donor; they care about the difference that is being made.