Raiser Sharpe Tips » Response

Give Your Donors What They Want so You Get What You Want

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:55:22 +0000

Thank your donors promptly and personally every time they mail you a gift.

Describe how you are using the donor’s last gift the way the donor intended. The majority of long-term, faithful donors give to make a difference, and many will not give again until they know their last gift was put to good use the way they wanted—so show ample proof.

Treat your donors as thoughtful investors who care how their money is spent.

Don’t appeal to short-term motivators, such as fear, that raise plenty of short-term funds but not enough long-term friends.

Give your donors enough information to make an informed opinion about giving. Anticipate the questions and objections that thoughtful people will raise about your organization, your mission and your ask, and answer them in your letter.

Help your donors solve a problem. Donors will not throw money at an impossible situation. They need to have hope that their donation will meet a need. So offer hope.

Don’t promote future tax benefits alone. Instead, stress the difference a donation makes in lives changed and problems solved today. You want donors who believe in your cause, who want to help others more than they help themselves.

Instead of asking for funds that your organization needs, invite donors to accomplish their goals by making the world a better place (by mailing you a gift) .

Think long term. Raising money with mail is a long-term commitment that you need to make to your organization and to your donors. You and I could put together a tear-jerking, guilt-inducing package that manipulated donors into parting with large sums of money, but those kinds of appeals are not sustainable year after year. Take the long-term view.

Remember that your donors are people. And people give to people to help people. This basic fundraising truth means that you must state your organizational needs in human terms whenever possible. “Human interest sells,” as Mal Warwick puts it. You must translate your case for support from non-profit-speak into flesh and blood. Donors want to know how their gift will help people. So give your donors what they want—heart-warming stories about people in need, and how you help them thanks to your donors’ generosity.

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Boost Your Fundraising Letter Response Rates and Revenue with Five Simple Segmentations

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:50:56 +0000

I was 44 years old, about to adopt my second child, and was sitting in my lawyer’s office, looking over his updated draft of my will.

Everything looked fine except for one small mistake. Throughout the document, he referred to me as Neil Sharpe. “I, Neil Sharpe, being of sound mind and body, do declare this to be my last will and testament.”

Well, it certainly was my last will and testament using that lawyer, because my name is not Neil. The will he drafted was invalid. It would never have worked after my death, or Neil’s death, for that matter.

Your fundraising letter can flop just as badly with your donor if it sounds as though you don’t know her. The same letter mailed to every donor in your database can’t help but sound generic and impersonal. The same letter that thanks current donors for their support sounds silly when addressed to someone who hasn’t given a donation in three years.

So if you’re a direct mail fundraiser and you want to increase your response rates or gross revenue, invest in some simple letter personalization. Invest in simple letter changes that show your donor that you know him. The more personal you make your letter, the more likely your donor is to read it, believe it, and respond.

The easiest way to personalize your letter is to segment it into donor groups. There are five main donor groups: new donors, current donors, lapsed donors, monthly donors, giving-circle donors.

1. New donors
A new donor is someone who has just given her first gift, and has never given before. In your letter, acknowledge that the donor is new. Thank her for that first gift. Thank her for joining a group of like-minded people (your other donors). Welcome her.

2. Current donors
A current donor is someone who has given a donation during the last 12 months. So acknowledge that. You can refer to his “recent support,” or “continued support.’ Or you can even mention that you are grateful for his most recent gift, received on “such-and-such a date.”

3. Lapsed donors
A lapsed donor is someone who hasn’t given a gift during the last 12 months, but did give a gift in the 12 months before that, or the 12 months before that, or the 12 months before that. A donor who hasn’t given a gift in four or more years isn’t lapsed, but dormant.

Let a lapsed donor know that you miss her support. Don’t speak to her as a current donor. Don’t say “your recent gift is changing the world,” because it isn’t. It was spent long ago. The secret with lapsed donors is to say you miss them rather than their money. “I haven’t heard from you for a while” sounds more personal and friendly than, “Neil, you haven’t made a gift in over two years.”

4. Monthly donors
No need to tell you what a monthly donor is. But donors who give a gift every month are usually excluded from your regular appeal letters, so if you are writing them, asking for a special gift, let them know that you know that they already support your charity with an automatic gift every 30 days. Show your gratitude for their regular support. Acknowledge that you are asking them to make an extra, special gift above and beyond their regular monthly one.

5. Giving-circle donors
If you have a mid-level donor program or a giving circle for donors who donate above a given level (the President’s Circle for $1,000 donors, for example), then these donors will be especially offended if you don’t acknowledge their membership. So do. Enough said.

Dividing your letter into four segments is easy. Simply write the letter, then reserve a paragraph on page one where you speak to each donor segment individually (personalizing page one of your letter but leaving the following pages generic is the cheapest way to personalize). Then give your lettershop the text for your letter, show where the variable paragraph appears, and supply four paragraphs of text to go into that place in the letter, a different paragraph for each donor segment. Then give the lettershop your mailing list, and, for each donor in the list, name the donor segment the donor belongs to.

Personalization works. I once worked at a national charity. I turned their generic fundraising letters into personalized letters that spoke to each donor individually, and showed the donor that the organization knew who they were. My executive director, who signed all the letters, began receiving all sorts of mail and phone calls from donors, thanking him for his letters. As he travelled the country and met with donors, he heard the same refrain: “Thank you so much for your letters. They sound like they’re written just to me.”

Which isn’t surprising, since they were.

Learn More
Attend my six-part tele-seminar, How to Run a Successful Direct Mail Fundraising Program. Taught over the phone six Saturdays in a row. My most popular seminar. Starts September 3, 2011. Early Bird Special expires August 27, 2011. Details.

Need help?
If you need help writing, designing, personalizing or mailing your fundraising appeals, or managing your direct mail fundraising program, give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

Boost Direct Mail Fundraising Response Rates Three Ways

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:25:18 +0000

What percentage of your donor base sends your organization a gift each year? If you are at all typical, less than half of your donors at any given time are active. So how can you increase the percentage of your donors or members who participate in your fundraising? Here are some ideas.

Offer more than a reply device
Donors like to give in different ways. So offer as many ways as possible for your donors to send you a gift. Consider these:

special donation page on your website
toll-free number
special Donate Now button in your email newsletters
payroll deduction by employer
remittance envelope with your newsletter
automatic monthly gift from bank account or credit card
reply device and postage-paid return envelope

Keep donors and members informed-and motivated
Why do annual donors stop giving? Many quit because they feel unappreciated. In her book, Thanks! A Guide to Donor-Centred Fundraising, Penelope Burke cites the findings of The CPP Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating, which shows that around 45% of donors “stop giving or give less than they could have . . . for reasons that are tied to lack of meaningful information or to a feeling that their giving is not appreciated.”

Wise stock market investors read the stocks page in the business section. They want to know how well their investment is performing. They attend annual shareholder meetings for the same reason.

Today’s donors are the same. They mail your organization a gift that pays no interest and returns no dividend but they still think of it as an investment. What they want in return is news from you on how well their investment is performing. Next to receiving no thanks at all, nothing infuriates donors more than being asked for another gift without knowing if the last one they mailed made a single bit of difference.

So keep your donors informed-using newsletters, updates, photos, email bulletins, annual reports, phone calls and more.

Write a longer letter
Tests show that longer letters often pull a higher response rate than shorter letters. You’ll need to test this with your organization. If you generally mail one-page letters, go for two pages. If you usually write two pages, try four. Just make sure your longer letters remains factual, informative, compelling and donor-centred.

Learn More

Handbook Number 13
How to Increase the Size and Frequency of Donor Gifts with Fundraising Letters.
Tested, proven tactics for raising more money from your current direct mail donors (with their cheerful participation).

Know Your Six Fundraising Numbers or Die

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:48:38 +0000

If you appeared on the reality TV show Dragon’s Den (or Shark Tank), pitching your charity to investors, would they give you any money?

Watch a few episodes of either show and you’ll quickly discover the most common mistake wannabe entrepreneurs make: They don’t know their numbers.

They don’t know their costs. Or their break-even point. Or the size of their market. They don’t know the numbers that will persuade investors to fund their business venture. So they walk away without a penny.

In fundraising, you live or die by your numbers. You can’t hope to get your budget approved (or hold onto your job) unless you can demonstrate that you know your business. And your business is numbers.

Here are the six numbers you need to know cold.

1. Net Annual Growth in Active Donors
Every year you add donors through acquisition and lose donors through attrition. The difference between these two numbers is your net growth. It’s either positive or negative (or unchanged–unlikely). Don’t measure just the number of new donors you add annually. That number might look impressive, but it’s false. 80,232 donors acquired minus 81,439 donors lost isn’t growth.

2. Net Cost Per Donor Acquired
Figure out how much you need to spend to acquire a new donor for every channel you use (direct mail, face-to-face, online, direct response TV, special events, and so on). You need to know this number to win board approval for a donor acquisition budget. Donor acquisition costs money. The other number you need to know is Lifetime Donor Value by Channel (below).

3. Attrition Rate by Channel
Donors die, lose their jobs, move, retire, divorce and do other disagreeable things that make them stop supporting your cause. Although many of these things are beyond your control, you still need to know the number of donors you lose each year, expressed as a percentage of your active donors, and calculated for every channel you use to raise funds. When you know your attrition rate, you know how many new donors you must acquire each year just to stop your file from shrinking. Because it is shrinking.

4. Renewal Rate by Channel
What percentage of your donors who give a gift one year also give a gift the next year? That’s your renewal rate. Your renewal rate indicates how passionate your supporters are about your cause. It also indicates how successful your donor stewardship program is.

5. Second Gift Conversion Rate
Most people who make one gift to a charity never make another. If you have a low Second Gift Conversion Rate, you either are attracting donors who are unlikely to make a second gift, you are not treating your first-time donors properly, or you are not asking for that vital second gift soon enough (or all three).

6. Lifetime Donor Value by Channel
How much does one of your average donors contribute to your charity in her lifetime? That’s the number you need to know to justify your investment in donor acquisition and stewardship. Include in this number every gift ever given, including annual gifts, major gifts, special event gifts and bequests. Know this number for every channel you acquire donors by.

By the way, if you master these six numbers, and adjust your fundraising program accordingly, you’ll have the knowledge and expertise you need to negotiate another vital fundraising number: your salary.

Learn More:
Direct Mail Fundraising Arithmetic Demystified.
Master the 14 most common formulas that help you measure-and improve-your DM fundraising results.

In Direct Mail Donor Acquisition, Ignore Your Initial Results

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:10:32 +0000

The secret to success at acquiring donors through the mail is to ignore your initial results.

The results you generate in the first few months of your direct mail acquisition campaign might delight you or they might distress you, but they will almost certainly mislead you. Don’t decide to continue of halt your program based on short-term results. That is reckless.

Here’s the problem. If you mailed two acquisition packages and Package A brought in 140,000 new donors and Package B brought in only 86,600, which package would you consider the winner?

Or if Package A generated a response rate of 1.3% while Package B generated only 0.6%, which package would you consider the winner?

Looking at these short-term results alone, you and I would declare Package A the winner. And we’d both be wrong.

We’d be wrong because we looked at the short-term results and not the lifetime value of the donors acquired by each package. Mercy Home for Boys and Girls in Chicago was making this mistake in the 1990s. They had a control package that consistently outpulled other packages in response rates and cost per donor acquired. Their control package included return address labels as a premium. And, because the package brought in more donors than any other package tested against it, Mercy Home thought they had a winner.

But as postage and list costs went up, Mercy Home did two vital things. They began testing cheaper packages against their control. And they began looking not only at short-term results, but also results that went back seven years.

What they quickly discovered was that donors who responded to Mercy Home’s premium package with one gift rarely gave a second one. During seven years of mailing that control package, they acquired 217,000 donors, but only 69,000 gave a second gift. So Mercy Home actually acquired only 69,000 donors, not 217,000.

Looking back seven years, Mercy Home discovered that Package B, even though it generated a lower response rate and brought in fewer donors initially, eventually outperformed Package A, the premium control package, in cost per donor acquired and lifetime net revenue per donor. The key to this was that a much larger percentage of donors who responded to Package B gave a second gift, and a third gift, and a fourth gift. Over time, these donors proved themselves more valuable than the one-gift-only donors who responded to Package A.

The lesson for Mercy Home, and for you and me, is to take the long-term view in direct mail donor acquisition. Always look beyond your initial numbers to measure the success of your acquisition efforts. Look at lifetime value. A mailing that appears to bomb today might be a winner. Eventually. And a mailing that appears to win today might be a loser. You just have to wait to find out.

Should a Donation Thank-You Letter Ever Ask for a Donation?

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:24:58 +0000

I got a big surprise the day I closed my direct mail fundraising consultancy and started working for a national charity. I discovered that my new employer used its gift acknowledgement letters as a way to raise funds. With every donation thank-you letter it mailed to donors, it included a reply device and business reply envelope.

At first, I was incensed. Then, I was embarased. You see, for the longest time, I have advocated in my workshops, books, handbooks, newsletter and blog that a charity should never use a thank-you letter as a chance to ask for another gift. Doing so was tacky and alienated many donors, I said.

I held this position largely because of a fundraising consultant and researcher called Penelope Burke. In her book, Donor-Centered Fundraising, which I recommend, Penny Burke presented the findings of her surveys of donors and their attitudes towards giving. Forty percent of respondents to Burke’s surveys said that asking for a donation in a thank-you letter is rude. A further 20% said they would stop giving if a charity treated them that way.

But during my first day on the job in the real world of fundraising, I learned that my employer raised over $150,000 a year with its thank-you letters. Thousands of donors responded to the reply device in their thank-you letters by returning it with a cheque in the enclosed business reply envelope.

I figure you can see the predicament I was in. Should I stand on my principles or let the donors decide what was rude and what wasn’t? I did the latter. I allowed the charity to continue using their thank-you letters as a way to raise funds.

Donors are a strange bunch. Gather a number of them into a small room for a focus group and they will tell you not to solicit them, however subtly, in a gift-acknowledgement letter. Ever. But do that very thing in their mailbox and they will respond. What donors say they will do and what donors actually do are often two separate things.

So should you ask for another gift when thanking donors for their last one? I recommend you test and find out. Surveys only prove what donors think they will do, or what they think they should do. Testing proves what they actually do. Sometimes the difference between the one and the other is more that $150,000 in net annual income.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

Learn More
Read 51 Ways to Write Original Donation Thank-You Letters, Boost Your Revenues and Donor Loyalty
with Effective Donation Thank-You Letters and other resources on donation fundraising letters.

FAQs About Trading Mailing Lists with Other Charities in Donor Acquisition

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:02:13 +0000

Q1. What is list trading?
A. List trading, or swapping, is the practice of exchanging mailing lists with another charity. They mail a fundraising letter to your list and you mail a fundraising letter to their list.

Q2. When do charities tend to trade lists?
A. List trading is used exclusively for donor acquisition. Charity A mails Charity B’s donors with a view to acquiring as many of those donors as possible, and vice versa.

Q3. Who “owns” the acquired donors?
A. Charities who swap lists do so with the clear understanding that any donors who respond to an acquisition mailing become donors of that charity as well.

Q4. How much does it cost?
A. List trading is free. No money changes hands.

Q5. How does the list trade take place?
A. Charities use a third party, such as a lettershop or list broker, to exchange the lists. That way, each charity can mail the other’s list only once. These third parties also de-dupe the lists so that you do not mail any donors on the other charity’s list that already support your cause.

Q6. How many names can I trade with another charity?
A. List trades are reciprocal. So however many names you want from the other charity, they will want an equal number of names from you.

Q7. Which names do I trade?
A. You will work with the other charity to decide the criteria to use when pulling your lists. The names you each select will invariably be donors who have made a gift within the past 12 months. You can further narrow your lists based on any other criteria that helps both charities.

Q8. Who do I ask to trade lists with my charity?
A. Pick charities whose donors are similar to yours but whose causes are different. Donors are unlikely to support two charities that do identical work.

Q9. What are the benefits of swapping mailing lists?
A. There are any benefits:

1. You save money on list rental fees
2. Your net income from a traded list can be twice that of a rented list
3. You stand to acquire twice as many donors as a rented list
4. Your cost of acquisition (cost per donor) is around half that of renting lists
5. The percentage of acquired donors who go on to make a second gift is higher than for donors acquired from a rented list
6. Your response rates will be higher

Q10. If I let another charity mail my donors, won’t they stop giving to me, or give less?
A Not likely. Your donors already support multiple charities and receive lots of mail from them. One more piece of mail won’t make a difference. Even if the other charity’s mailing is highly successful, 90% of your donors won’t respond. Plus, few donors give all that they can. Chances are that if they like the other charity’s mission, they will support both of you, not one or the other. And remember this vital thing: list trading is reciprocal. While the other charity is mailing your donors, you are also mailing theirs.

Q11. When should I not swap my list?
A. You should not trade your list if your privacy policy forbids the practice.

Predict Your Direct Mail Fundraising Campaign Success with Doubling Day

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:00:39 +0000

How can you predict the success of your direct mail fundraising campaign before it has concluded? You know the challenge. If your charity is at all typical, you receive donations from your fundraising appeals for months, even years, after they have mailed. I worked for a non-profit organization that received thousands of dollars each November from its end-of-year mailing OF THE YEAR BEFORE.

Why donors hang onto business reply envelopes for 12 months or longer is beyond me. But they do. Does this mean you can never know the success of your direct mail campaigns until you have received every last response and every last dollar? No, because you can use doubling day instead.

Doubling day is that point in a direct-mail appeal life cycle when you can anticipate that half the responses have been received. Doubling day can measure the total number of responses received, or the total amount of money received (although these two days are likely to be different).

For example, if you mail 5,000 pieces and receive 25 replies by doubling day, multiply by two. You can expect a total of fifty inquiries, for a one percent response rate. Depending on the class of mail you use for your mailing envelope and reply envelope, doubling day will occur at different intervals, expressed as the number of days since the promotion was mailed. Your doubling day, obviously, can only be known when you have mailed at least a couple of direct mail campaigns to the same audience at the same time of year.

According to the folks who know such things, most non-profit mailers receive half of their responses on the eighteenth day after dropping their campaign into the mail, when mailing bulk rate. Your results may vary.

Knowing your doubling day helps you optimize revenue. Most non-profit organizations that rely on the mail for the bulk of their donated income drop each fundraising appeal in the mail just as the previous one has reached its peak and is declining. That way, they have a package in the mail every day of the year. Knowing your doubling day helps you time your appeals so that you mail as many as possible during the year without annoying your donors or cannibalizing your response.

Doubling Day is the traditional tool that non-profits use to predict the success of their direct mail fundraising campaigns while they are in the mail, but it’s useful only if it’s consistent. A number of things can throw off your doubling day.

Delays in mail delivery
In Canada and the United States, doubling day is turning into doubling month. Every mail class has been going up at least three days in delivery, so that each class is harder to rely on.

Class of mail
Naturally, if you use first-class postage on your mailing envelope and your business reply envelope you will reach doubling day sooner than if you use bulk class and no postage on your BRE.

Unusually large gifts in previous campaigns
If you use doubling day to measure the amount of money raised rather than the number of responses received, one or more unusually large single gifts in previous campaigns will skew your doubling day, making it appear to arrive sooner than it does. Remove those large gifts from your calculation to arrive at an accurate doubling day.

Contents of the direct mail package
If your mailing contains a newsletter or brochure or something else that donors will likely hang on to, this may draw out your doubling day. Some donors respond to these types of mailings months after they have dropped.

Time of year
The same is true for Christmas appeals. Donors who receive them in November often hang onto the package until the end of December before responding. So, at Christmas, expect your doubling day to be the same day it was for the previous year’s Christmas appeal, not the previous month’s appeal.

Learn more

Handbook Number 16
Direct Mail Fundraising Arithmetic Demystified.
Master 14 common formulas that help you measure-and improve-your DM fundraising results.

Good Fundraising Letter Reply Devices Tell Donors What to Do

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:24:48 +0000

My brother-in-law says you should be thankful for truckers because everything you buy was handled at some point by a trucker. LoWayne is a trucker, so he’s biased. But I think he’s right anyway.

You depend on truckers for your life. And, if you are a direct mail fundraiser, you depend on direct mail response devices for your livelihood. Response cards and order forms are the devices that deliver the donor’s gift to your office. Without them, no direct mail transaction takes place.

That’s why one of the most important parts of your direct mail fundraising letter is the copy that tells your donor how to donate. Somewhere in your letter and on your coupon you need to give explicit instructions telling the reader what the reader must do to make a financial contribution. Here are a few ideas

1. Tell them to complete the form
This sounds self-evident and redundant, but you must tell potential donors what they need to do. So start with telling them to complete the form. In your letter, say something like this: “Donate today by completing the enclosed form.”

2. Tell them how to return the form or reply device
If you are using a business reply envelope, tell your donor right on the reply device to return the reply device to you in the enclosed business reply envelope. Make sure donors know that they are required to do something.

3. Tell them what to include
If you are using a business reply envelope, tell buyers what they need to put in it. Maybe it’s a check. Maybe a survey. Spell out what you need the buyer to do: “Return this reply form in the enclosed postage-paid envelope with your donation, made payable to XYZ Charity.”

4. Tell them what they get in return
Whenever possible, describe the benefit that donors receive for completing and returning the reply device or order form. For example, “Complete and mail this reply form today with your donation to receive your free Enviro Tote Bag.”

Sales people don’t make a sale until they ask for the order. And your fundraising letters won’t secure any donations unless you ask for the reply device.

Handbook Number 12
How to Write
and Design Effective Direct Mail Fundraising Reply Devices.
Attract the gifts you need by making the donation process quick and painless for your donors (and you).

Boost Fundraising Letter Response Rates by Making Responding Convenient

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:39:34 +0000

I had a client who wanted to drive prospective customers to his online store using a postcard. Great idea, I thought, and cost effective.

He had a terrific product, a compelling offer, and a sound business model. He had just one problem. He wanted to make all website visitors register before they could browse his product catalog. Big mistake.

So I, along with his business partner, managed to talk him out of the idea. And he was glad that we did.

That’s because one of the fundamental requirements of direct mail is that you make it easy for your prospects, customers and donors to respond. The word to remember is “convenience.” You must make responding as convenient as possible. Here are some ways to do that with your donors.

REPLY DEVICE

Print your donor’s name and address on it so the donor doesn’t have to.
If your donors must complete part of the card, give them enough space (most direct mail donors are over 60 and can’t read or write without glasses).

REPLY ENVELOPE

Pay for return postage so your donors don’t have to hunt for a stamp.
Print your return address on the return envelope.

TEAR-OUT COUPONS

Place coupons at the outside corners of the page (not in the gutter or the middle of the page), where they are easy to tear out.
Perforate the edges of tear-out coupons with a fine perf, not a coarse one, so they are easy to tear out.

PAYMENT

Offer as many payment options as possible without paralyzing your reader.
Accept all the major credit cards.
Accept cheques.
Accept recurring monthly donations.
Accept donations by telephone (toll-free, of course).
Accept donations by mail.
Accept donations on your website.

One of the beautiful things about donating by mail is the convenience. But that is only true if the direct mail donating experience is convenient. Use some of these methods to improve your convenience quotient and your donors will thank you for it—with their gifts.

Learn more

Handbook Number 12
How to Write
and Design Effective Direct Mail Fundraising Reply Devices.
Attract the gifts you need by making the donation process quick and painless for your donors (and you).

Handbook Number 13
How to Increase the Size and Frequency of Donor Gifts with Fundraising Letters.
Tested, proven tactics for raising more money from your current direct mail donors (with their cheerful participation).

Four Steps to Better Donation Letter Reply Devices

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:03:58 +0000

Successful direct mail donation letters contain three things: a compelling case for support, a request for funds (the “ask”), and a response device. The case is the Incentive. The ask is the Imperative. And the response device is the Instrument.

The most popular reply device is the reply coupon, that slip of paper the size of a dollar bill that’s found in most direct mail fundraising packages. But today it could also be a landing page on a website. To make sure your mailing generates the kind of response you want—and the number of donations you want—you must have a reply device that is clear, complete, compelling and convenient.

Clear

stands out in the package and is easy to find
gives explicit instructions on what the reader must do to make a donation
has sufficient space for handwriting
keeps decisions to a minimum (the fewer checkboxes the better)

Complete

features an ask ladder, such as $50 $75 $100 Other $___________
offers the two most popular payment methods, cheque and credit card
includes the complete address and phone number of your organization
contains an unobtrusive key code so that you can track response
tells the donor what to do with the reply device (eg. “Return this completed reply device with your donation in the enclosed postage-paid envelope”)

Compelling

repeats the case for support and the ask in summary form, usually a sentence
where possible, shows what the donor’s gift “buys” (eg. $50 Feeds a family for a week $75 Gives a family a goat $100 Provides enough seed to feed 12 families)
includes other incentives to donating, such as a free premium or membership benefits

Convenient

features the donor’s name and address pre-printed on the form
has check-off boxes wherever possible
is postage-paid or features a toll-free number
comes with a postage-paid business reply envelope

Learn more . . .

Handbook Number 12
How to Write and Design Effective Direct Mail Fundraising Reply Devices.
Attract the gifts you need by making the donation process quick and painless for your donors (and your organization).

Lift Fundraising Letter Response Rates with Lift Notes

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:21:34 +0000

Do lift notes still lift response rates to fundraising letters? Yes, as long as they stand out.

A lift note, of course, is an extra component slipped into a direct mail package to lift response. It’s also called a lift letter. Publishers call it a publisher’s letter, because it’s usually signed by the publisher.

The classic lift note is a sheet of paper that folds in half. On the front is usually a teaser. And on the inside is a note, usually written by someone other than the person who signed the letter.

In the olden days, lift notes invariably lifted response. Direct mail marketer Harry Walsh says lift notes, usually reiterating the no-risk guarantee, used to boost response by around 11 percent no matter what copy was used. Amazing but true.

Not so today. Your prospects are much more savvy to the devices that direct mail marketers use to boost response. Their Phoniness Filters are on 24/7. So we have to do something different than simply enclose a note from Bono.

Direct mail marketer Barbara Harrison says the best rule for using lift notes today is to abandon the rules. For her client, the Tuft’s School of Veterinary Medicine, Barbara once wrote a lift note from a dog.

The lift note was one of two found in the package (which promoted the school’s newsletter, “Your Dog”). That’s one rule she broke. The first lift note was from the dean of the school, and drew attention to the expertise and credentials of its canine authorities.

The second lift note, the one written by the mutt, described why dogs hate the newsletter so. This newsletter, said the dog, makes its owners too smart, and teaches owners how to break dogs’ bad habits. This unique lift note “added significantly to the strength of this control,” says Barbara in the chapter on lift notes in 2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success, the book edited by Denny Hatch and Don Jackson.

Want to see good examples of lift notes? Read:

Over 130 Sample Fundraising Letters. International, national and local charities share examples of their direct mail fundraising expertise.

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Handbook Number 1
53 Simple Ways to Raise More Money with Your Donor Newsletter.
Learn how to strike the profitable balance between informing and asking.

Direct Mail Fundraising Tests: Follow these Eight Rules for Success

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:25:38 +0000

The best way to improve your direct mail fundraising program is through testing. Don’t follow fads, board whims, or a gut feeling that turns out to be indigestion.

Instead, test. And, to save money and time (and further indigestion), follow these eight rules.

Rule #1: Test things that are significant
Don’t test a blue signature versus a red signature. It’s too expensive of a test. Don’t test Times Roman versus Arial. Test things that are significant. In other words, test a six-page letter versus a two-page letter. Test a full-color package versus a black and white package. These would be significant tests.

Rule #2: Test things you can control
You can control your printing, you can control the length of the letter, you can control the photography, and so on. Don’t test things that you have no control over-for example, mailing during a recession. You could have no control over that in the future.

Rule #3: Make your test large enough to be significant
Mail at least 5,000 pieces to get 50 responses at a one percent response rate. Fifty responses is considered the minimum number you must generate to achieve a trustworthy test.

Rule #4: Test one thing at a time
If you mail a package and it does really, really well and you think, “Oh, we can improve this package,” don’t do a test where you mail a similar package but you change the headline and you change the teaser copy on the envelope and you change the reply device and you change the postscript, because if the second package outperforms the first package, you won’t know what was responsible for the improvement. Was it the teaser copy on the envelope? Was it the headline? Was it the reply device? Was it the postscript? You won’t know. Test one thing at a time to be sure.

Rule #5: Don’t let large gifts skew your results
When you examine your campaign results, you see gifts of $25, $35 and $45, which is typical. But then you see a gift of $15,000 in response to the same campaign. That number will skew your results if you let it. Your spreadsheet for this campaign may tell you that the average gift was $92, but that’s because of this unusually large gift. If you take this one gift of $15,000 out of your calculation, your average gift will likely be closer to $36.

So be careful about large gifts. Remove them when you’re doing calculations to measure what your net income will be. Expect your average gift and your cost to raise a dollar to be skewed by large gifts.

Rule #6: Test acquisition mailings for people, not profit
Concentrate on acquiring loyal donors in the greatest numbers at the lowest cost. Enough said.

Rule #7: If you are starting out in direct mail, aim to acquire as many donors as possible
If you’re just starting in direct mail and you’re obviously starting with donor acquisition, aim to acquire as many donors as possible, not to make as much money as possible. Success in the mail comes after the first gift.

Rule #8: Test every time you mail
If you’re mailing to a large number of people, always test something. Test two asks, test the ask string on your reply device, test the teaser copy, test the length of the letter, test the signatory, test something of significance every time you mail. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll improve your packages and your approach over time.

These tips are taken from my new, 270-page book:

Mail Superiority.
Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

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Boost Response by Not Including a Reply Envelope

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:53:04 +0000

Your donors do not respond to your direct mail appeals because you include a postage-paid reply envelope. They respond because they believe in your cause, admire your organization, and want to help the people you serve.

Postage-paid reply envelopes are a convenience. Nothing more. They tend to boost response because they make giving by mail easier. Your donor doesn’t have to hunt for an envelope, search for a pen, find your address on your letterhead and then copy that address onto the envelope, then hunt for a stamp.

But remember this: your donors and members support your organization financially because they want to, not because you make it easy to.

Some non-profit organizations have this back to front. They think they must include a reply envelope with every piece of correspondence that leaves their office. “Including a reply envelope gives the donor a reason to mail back another gift,” they say.

So their newsletters include one. Open their annual report and there it is, stitched into the gutter. Open the nice thank-you card from the executive director and what drops out? A reply envelope. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

This is a blunder. Including a reply envelope with a thank-you letter is about as tasteful as me in a swimsuit.

Asking for a donation in every single thing you mail your donors (and a reply envelope asks for a donation, however subtly) is wrong-headed. You and I are in the friend-raising business. And friends who are always looking to their friends for money soon find themselves looking for other friends.

If you want to treat your donors with respect, mail them a letter every once in a while that doesn’t ask the donor to do anything but accept your sincere and deep-felt gratitude. Tell them how much you appreciate them. How much you are grateful for their faith in your organization. Don’t ask them to respond. Just end your note with “thank you” followed by a period.

Try this today and see what kind of a response you get.

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Mail Superiority.
Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

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Master the single most important letter in direct mail fundraising.

Handbook Number 21
Sample Donation Thank-You Letters.
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Will Direct Mail Fundraising Work for You? Ask and Find Out

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:56:48 +0000

Back in 1997, as I sat in the departures lounge at Ottawa International Airport, I didn’t know if Ruth would accept my proposal of marriage. I fidgeted. I procrastinated. Finally, as they announced the final call for her flight back to Ohio, I popped the question.

Ruth said yes. Yes!

That’s the tough part about asking someone to marry you. You have to ask them. You don’t know what their answer will be until you ask, and unless you ask.

Direct mail fundraising is the same. You won’t discover if it works for your organization and your cause unless you ask. And you do that with a direct mail test. You craft your case for support, your write and design a strong donor acquisition package, you rent a list (preferably many lists) of potential donors, and you ask a small group of people on that list to marry you, sort of.

The secret to success in direct mail fundraising is finding people who will mail you many donations over time. You are after a relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship.

The minimum number of names you should mail your test package to is 5,000. That’s because industry insiders, me included, reckon that a test mailing is valid only if it generates at least 50 gifts. Since an acquisition mailing can be expected to generate a response rate of about 1%, you must mail at least 5,000 pieces to receive those 50 responses.

As you can see, your cost for testing direct mail donor acquisition is small. Writing, designing, printing and mailing 5,000 packages, including list rental, will cost you anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000.

If your response rate is adequate, and if your cost per piece is affordable, and if your cost to acquire a donor is within your budget, you can mail confidently to a much larger number of prospective donors and anticipate similar results (provided, of course, that you mail the same package at the same time of year to the remaining people on the lists that performed so well in your test).

Be courageous! Don’t wait until that kindred spirit is ready to leave town before you pop the question. Ask now and find out! You won’t know unless you ask.

If you need help writing, designing, printing or mailing test packages, or choosing lists, we should talk. Call me on my nickel at 1 877 742-7732.

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Breakthrough Fundraising Letters.
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Handbook Number 4
Anatomy of a Profitable Fundraising Letter.
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Five Vital Signs of a Healthy Direct Mail Fundraising Program

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:02:30 +0000

I spent last night visiting two hospitals with my four-year-old son, Spencer. I noticed that the staff at each hospital took the same vital signs (pulse, oxygen saturation, temperature, breathing) to determine Spencer’s health. Nurses and doctors miles apart, working for different hospitals, on different shifts, knew the same things to look for to determine the health of their patient.

You must do the same with your direct mail fundraising program. Here are the five vital signs to watch for to make sure your program is healthy, and remains healthy.

Vital Sign #1: Your donor file. It’s growing.
Death is unavoidable, even in fundraising. Friends die. A healthy direct mail program includes multiple donor acquisition mailings each year to replace donors who die or otherwise “lapse,” and to grow the donor file even further so there is a net gain in new supporters yearly.

Vital Sign #2: Your friends. They are loyal.
Experienced annual giving officers know that the main goal of fundraising letters is not to raise money but to retain donors. Make friends for life and they will donate. A robust direct response fundraising program aims to keep as many donors as possible, and avoids methods (sweepstakes and premiums, for example) that attract too many short-term donors. A well-run program mails original, personal, heart-felt thank-you letters for every gift within 24 hours, and mails newsletters to keep donors informed about how their gifts are changing the world.

Vital Sign #3: Your numbers. You know them.
Successful directors of development know that you can only manage what you can measure. And the beauty of direct mail is that you can measure just about everything. What is your attrition rate? What is your cost to raise a dollar? What is your cost per piece? If you’re watching your numbers, you know the answers.

Vital Sign #4: Your testing. It’s thorough.
Arrive at the emergency department with a high temperature and the nurse will likely give you something for it, such as Tylenol. Medical staff don’t simply measure your vital signs and chart them. They take remedial action. If you’re running a healthy direct mail program, you are doing the same, through testing.

Which of those 11 lists generated the highest response and highest average gift at the lowest cost? Which package generated the highest response, the package with the brochure or the one without? Which ask generated the highest average gift, the one for the new kitchen or the one for the new mothers? If you are testing your lists, your creative and your cases for support, you aren’t going with your gut anymore. And your program is healthier for it.

Vital Sign #5: Your donors. You treat them differently.
Arrive at the hospital pregnant, they take you to obstetrics. Arrive broken, they take you to orthopedics. A hospital treats its patients according to the patients’ needs, not the hospital’s. A healthy direct mail fundraising program does likewise. It solicits and respects the goals, desires and wishes of its donors.

Those who want to give monthly, can. Those who want an annual receipt, get it. Those who want to receive updates on your work in Darfur by email, not by mail, get them. Those who supported your new initiative with a $2,000 gift are delighted that your subsequent appeals cover the same need, acknowledge their support of that need, and speak to them as a partner and not as a paycheck.

One advantage to raising money through the mail is that you don’t have to wait until you see signs of sickness before you seek treatment and watch your health improve. Because direct mail is testable, and because others have gone before you, you can avoid plenty of the maladies that have felled perfectly worthy causes. Watch these five vital signs and you should avoid the emergency department.

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Six Insider Secrets of Running a Profitable Annual Fundraising Letter Program.
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Creative Business Reply Envelopes Boost Fundraising Letter Response Rates

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:40:39 +0000

When was the last time you agonized over what to put on your business reply envelope? If you’re like most non-profit organizations, your BRE never changes. You mail the same BRE with every direct mail fundraising letter. And you likely print your BREs in bulk to save on printing.

But maybe you should re-think the humble BRE.

The Canadian National Institute for the Blind obviously did. The CNIB, as it likes to be called, mailed an acquisition letter at the end of 2007 that included a unique BRE. The package that the BRE came in included a mailing envelope, letter, credit-card-size plastic magnifying glass, and a sheet of more than 100 return address labels. A premium with my name printed on it always gets my attention, but what really caught my eye in this package was the BRE.

In the upper left corner of the BRE, where you normally write your name and address, is a rectangular box the same size as the address labels included with the appeal. Printed inside this box is this imperative: “Use Your First Label Here!” That’s what I call a creative use of a BRE. Suddenly the boring BRE becomes an involvement device, and not a frivolous one, either, but an involvement device that encourages a donor to make a donation.

There’s more.

The CNIB even makes good use of the return address. Here’s what it says:

CNIB – SERVING YOUR COMMUNITY
DONATIONS PROCESSING CENTRE
PO BOX 32002 STN BRM B
TORONTO ON M7Y 5R2

As you can see, even the return address on your BRE gives you an opportunity to communicate with your donors and say something positive about the work you do and the people you help. I salute the folks at the CNIB for their creativity.

If you’d like to see what this BRE looks like, visit http://www.raisersharpe.com/z/cnib/

If you need help making your direct mail fundraising letters more creative, why not give me a call? That’s 1 877 742-7732.

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Boost Your Direct Mail Fundraising Response Rates with Deadlines

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:52:44 +0000

Why did the Canadian cross the road? To get to the middle.

Your job as a direct mail fundraiser is to give your donors both a reason for donating and an incentive for donating.

Your enemy is inertia. Your enemy is Coronation Street. Plenty of perfectly nice donors with perfectly good intentions to donate will nevertheless procrastinate or get distracted, lay your fundraising letter aside to deal with tomorrow, but then forget.

Which is why you should consider using an incentive, something that will give your appeal letter a sense of urgency. Something that’ll motivate your donor to act today. I recommend a deadline. Give your donor a deadline for responding and you will likely boost your response rate.

Some deadlines are naturals. December 31 for an end-of-year appeal. April 8, 2007 for an Easter appeal. February 5, 2008 for a political appeal for a United States presidential candidate.

Other deadlines are just as motivating, but may need some explaining. If a wealthy donor of yours, for example, has offered to donate $200,000 if you raise $200,000 (we call this a “matching gift appeal”), then you will need to give your donors a deadline for responding and explain why you need their gift by then (you don’t get the matching gift if donors don’t respond in sufficient numbers with sufficient donations by the deadline).

Another compelling deadline is a date on the calendar when you will stop processing surveys or stop accepting petitions.

Here are some keys to making your deadline an incentive that boosts response:

1. Use a date, not a time period
Don’t say, “We need to receive your gift within the next 30 days.” Say, instead, “We need to receive your gift before September 21, 2008.”

2. Give a valid reason for your deadline
The last day of your fiscal year is not a valid deadline. Donors don’t think in fiscal years. They think in calendar years, which start on January 1 and end on December 31. Telling your donors that they must respond by March 31 (assuming that’s your fiscal year end) may impress your chief financial officer as an urgent deadline, but it will not impress your donors.

3. Repeat your deadline anywhere you ask for a gift
Stress your deadline in the body of your letter, in your P.S., and on your reply device. You can even print it across the face of your reply envelope in bold capitals.

4. Don’t mistake your deadline for your case for support
Your deadline is the incentive you offer for giving now. But your case for support is the reason you offer for giving. Your deadline is not sufficient. You must communicate a strong case for support first. Then offer your donors a deadline that inspires them to pick up their checkbook instead of the TV remote.

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Count Your Donors and Your Dollars in Direct Mail Fundraising.

Alan Sharpe — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:37:15 +0000

One of the greatest mistakes I see non-profit organizations making is watching their dollars and not their donors.

When I conduct a comprehensive audit of an organization’s direct mail fundraising program, I invariably discover that they have all sorts of hard numbers about their response rates, average gifts and cost to raise a dollar. But they lack data on donor attrition rates, donor renewal rates and first-time donor conversion rates. Big mistake.

You need to look beyond your dollars and see the donors who gave them. Without donors you won’t have any dollars. My apologies to my readers in the UK, Europe, Asia and Africa, since you do not use the dollar as your currency. But the alliteration I’m looking for (donors and dollars) only works on this side of the pond, so please bear with me.

You could be happy today with your direct mail program if it generated an average gift of $45 but never realize that over half of your donors give you just one gift and never give again. See where I’m headed here?

Your average gift doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about your health any more than your response rate tells you everything.

In the direct mail fundraising business, your goal is to acquire and retain donors. Emphasis on the word retain. So some of the numbers you need to be watching have everything to do with donors and nothing to do with dollars.

Here are three metrics you should be following:

First-time donor conversion rate: The percentage of first-time donors who give a second gift.

Renewal rate: Percentage of donors in any given year who gave last year and this year as well (they “renewed” their gift this year, in other words).

Attrition rate: Percentage of donors who stop giving each year.

Yes, a healthy direct mail fundraising program generates a respectable net return on investment and keeps costs at a reasonable level. But it also acquires donors at a pace that exceeds the donor attrition rate. And it retains the donors it acquires, for as long as possible. So watch your donors as well as your dollars. You’ll stay out of trouble.

By the way, if you need a professional direct mail fundraising consultant to audit your direct mail fundraising program, give me a call. That’s 1 877 742-7732.

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Direct Mail Fundraising Letters: Your Competitor is American Idol.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:37:57 +0000

The bereaved mother who became a figurehead for the US anti-war movement abandoned her fight in May 2007 after growing disenchanted with the campaign.

Here is an advocate and fundraiser who literally gave all that she had for her cause. After her son, Casey, was killed in the war in Iraq, she set up a protest camp outside the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. All the money from the survivor’s benefits paid for her son’s death, and everything she earned from speaking and book fees, she spent on her cause. “I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.”

Cindy became the “postergirl” for the US anti-war movement. But now she has quit. And here’s why.

“Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives,” she said.

There you have it, your challenge in raising funds and raising awareness for your cause through the mail. Many donors care more about American Idol than they do about your mission. Your challenge as a direct mail fundraiser is to craft fundraising letters that are so creative, so dramatic, and so compelling, that your donors give you their undivided attention (and their undesignated donations).

Your donor has never been more busy and more distracted than she is today. Five-hundred channels on the TV remote. One-hundred million videos viewed on YouTube each day. Around three-thousand marketing messages a day.

Advertisers are working hard to get your donor’s attention. So are the TV networks. Which means you need to stand out and be different from more than just the other charities in your sector. Your largest competitor is American Idol.

I have no sympathy for the families of American Idol contestants who lost. Sorry, but the show is vulgar and vain. But I have great sympathy for the families of soldiers who died in Iraq in a senseless war, since all wars are senseless. And I have great sympathy for Cindy Sheehan. She lost her battle, and her war.

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In this 90-minute on-demand seminar, direct mail fundraising copywriter, consultant and coach, Alan Sharpe, shares many of the secret techniques revealed in his latest book, Breakthrough Fundraising Letters. Alan shows you proven ways to inspire your donors using paper and postage. You’ll learn tips, techniques and shortcuts that you can use right now.

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