Sincerity, clarity, and a touching story can make all the difference between a blah letter and a great one.
#Direct mail letter examples professional
After all, charities pay big bucks to professional copywriters for their direct mail letters.īut, these letters are not that difficult. Writing an excellent direct mail fundraising letter can look overwhelming. Somehow, something we can hold in our hands and examine at leisure seems pretty special. The continuing popularity of direct mail doesn't seem too surprising given the cluttered nature of all of our social media feeds and email accounts. This generation uses both online methods of giving and direct mail. Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) accounts for about 43 percent of giving. This group also still favors direct mail. Winspire, working with several statistical sources, concluded that the older generation (born 1945 or earlier) still accounts for about 24 percent of charitable giving in the US. Whereas the two-page letter may have felt more appropriate for this group.It seems that, although we've all been distracted by the shiny object of social media in recent years, direct mail has kept up a steady drumbeat of effectiveness.Īccording to research by Blackbaud Institute, direct mail has declined in recent years, but it remains acceptable and/or important for mature donors and Baby Boomers. This may show that donors who are already giving regularly may feel that a four-page letter asking them for an additional cash gift is ‘too much’ when they are already giving. In fact, the two-page letter pack raised more money and had a slightly higher average gift value. The only exception was among regular donors which produced more similar results from both packs across a range of measures (although there was a smaller pool to test this on). More constituents gave to the four-page letter pack and it yielded almost double the return on investment.Īcross both cash-donor and non-donor segments, the four-page letter generated better results. The four-page letter pack raised over twice as much as the two-page letter pack and had a significantly higher average gift value and income per constituent. However, as best practice also backed up this theory about longer letters, Sheffield decided to carry out a split test to see if the theory would work with their alumni-base for their 2019 direct mail appeal. A longer letter will contain more waffle to ‘pad it out’ and won’t be as concise.Alumni will be concerned that we’re being frivolous and wasting money or paper.Alumni don’t have time to read a two-page letter in full, let alone four pages.We don’t want to ‘bombard’ alumni with too much information.When proposing this idea to colleagues, common worries about sending longer letters were: Advised by Adrian Salmon from GG+A consultancy, it was recommended that Sheffield try a longer letter as part of the mail pack. Income from direct mail had grown but in order to grow it further in 2019, whilst still being cost-effective, Sheffield needed to try a different approach. With a limited budget, the University of Sheffield currently produces all direct mail in-house (using a local agency for design, print and fulfilment). The University of Sheffield has been sending alumni direct mail in order to raise money for student scholarships every year since 2017. CDE project 22: media relations and the public face of charities.CDE project 21: working with suppliers as partners.CDE project 19: evidence of impact and effectiveness.CDE project 18: supporters as champions for your mission.CDE project 16: creating a distinctive service culture.CDE project 15: the role of trustee boards and senior managers.CDE project 14: getting the right people as fundraisers.CDE project 13: giving choices and managing preference.CDE project 12: inspirational creativity.CDE project 11: communication with individual donors.CDE project 6: the use and misuse of emotion.CDE project 3: satisfaction and commitment.CDE project 2: fundraising and vulnerability.CDE project 1: the use and misuse of language.The 6Ps: a blueprint for transforming fundraising.SOFII’s letter to the future/ 32 lightbulb moments.
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