Know What to Expect From Direct Mail

What to expect part 2.
1.Process

Direct mail fundraising is a process, not an event. It's a way for you to build solid, mutually rewarding relationships with lots of donors – without necessarily ever meeting them face-to-face.

2. Long-term

Rewards in direct mail come only over the long haul. The real return on investment may be sizable bequests you receive years later from one donor in a hundred, or a thousand. But a successful direct mail fundraising program requires you to make available a number of different ways for donors to become involved – as volunteers or activists, not just financial donors. And you'll need to provide many different ways for people to channel financial support to you.

3. Cost-effectiveness

The cost of any direct mail fundraising project is much less important than its cost-effectiveness. The two aren't at all the same. Sometimes it makes good sense to spend more. In fact, it often is sensible to spend more money on your top donors – and it may well be practical to save money by spending less on inactive or less generous donors.

4. The list

By far the most important aspect of any direct mail fundraising campaign is the list of people you mail to. Mailing an effective package to one list could easily raise ten or twenty times as much money as mailing the same package to another list.

5. The offer

Next in importance to the list is the offer you make in a mailing – for example, how much money you ask for, how you say the money will be used, and what benefits (tangible or intangible) you promise in return for a gift. Because there are many different offers you might make, there are lots of different kinds of mailings. The most common ones are annual fund or membership renewals, special appeals, and membership acquisition (or donor prospect) mailings. Each type features a distinctive offer.

6. Segmentation

Segmentation is the key to cost-effective appeals to previous donors – based on the principle of "different strokes for different folks." In segmenting a mailing, you select some donors to be included and others to be excluded. Likewise, you'll give some donors special – and more expensive – treatment (such as personalization, first class postage, or higher quality materials). The most important criteria to use when making decisions about who gets what are the recency, frequency, and donation amount of your donors and the means by which you originally recruited your donors. For example, there are likely to be big differences between donors who first responded to a Public Service Announcement on television and those who were recruited by mail.

7. Annual giving

The majority of successful direct mail fundraising programs are built on the foundation of an annual giving or membership development program (in reality if not in name). This is probably the most effective way for most charities to realize the full potential of direct mail fundraising techniques. In a membership program – just like in the magazine subscription renewal process – the renewal series is the basic element. Using a series of 3, 5, or more successive contacts with each member, you can persuade the largest possible number to renew their memberships each year.

8. Testing

By testing alternative lists, offers, packages, or other techniques, you can make incremental improvements in results over time. Every direct mail fundraising program should make some use of testing. It's the only way to derive value from one of direct mail's biggest advantages: You can measure its results.

9. Repetition

Repeating themes, slogans, and logos (or other graphic devices) is absolutely necessary to get your message across. The repetition of familiar words and images will reinforce what you're saying and help you penetrate the fog of thousands of competing messages bombarding every donor every day of the year.

10. Record-keeping

With consistently accurate and timely record-keeping, you'll gain all the advantages of direct mail: its measurability, its use of precise segmentation, and its ability to generate a lot of information about donors over the years. An effective direct mail fundraising program demands an investment of time, thought, and money in an efficient computerized record – keeping system.
19 Things All Successful Direct Marketing Companies Know1
1. Direct Marketing Is a Strategy, Not a Tactic
2. The Consumer, Not the Product, Must Be the Hero
3. Communicate with Each Customer or Prospect as an Audience of One
4. Answer the Question “Why Should I?”
5. Advertising Must Change Behavior, Not Just Attitudes
6. The Next Step: Profitable Advertising
7. Build the “Brand Experience”
8. Create Relationships
9. Know and Invest in Each Customer’s Lifetime Value
10. “Suspects” Are Note Prospects
11. Media Is a Contact Strategy
12. Be Accessible to Your Customers
13. Encourage Interactive Dialogues
14. Learn the Missing “When?”
15. Create an Advertising Curriculum That Teaches as it Sells
16. Acquire Customers with the Intention to Loyalize Them
17. Loyalty Is A Continuity Program
18. Your Share of Loyal Customers, Not Your Share of Market Creates Profits
19.You Are What You Know
Ten Things You Should Know Before Trying Direct Mail Marketing
1. Know Your Target Market. Who are you selling to?
Are they going to be interested in your product? What benefits does your offer provide? A targeted list will probably do better then a non-targeted list. All things being equal, it makes sense that people, who have purchased items like yours before, will be your best marketing bet.
2. Know Your List Broker.
There are list brokers and then there are List Brokers. At the least, your broker should be a professional listed in Standard Rates and Data. Your list broker should be willing to take the time to match your offer to a specific list he believes will do the best for you. Anyone can call themselves a list broker and rent you names from the phone book. A professional broker cares about your business.
3. Know Your Break Even Point on Your Mail Piece.
How many sales must you make to cover your costs of mailing? Figure the cost of the list, the stock used for the mail piece and the postage. You should also figure in your cost of labor, though many marketers discount this cost when first starting out. Quite often, a more expensive product sold to fewer customers, will work out much better for you than an inexpensive product that must be sold to many customers in order to reach that same break even point. There are exacting formulas available to figure this out.
4. While in the early stages of a mail order campaign…
you can often make a profit from your initial mailings to lists of prospects who are not already your customers, ultimately, even a well run mail order company can lose money on “The Front End”. What you are looking for is a maximum number of customers. Once you have these customers, you supply “back end offers” to them. You may also, eventually, rent or sell your mail list.
5. You will always get a higher response to a mailing…
from those who have responded before.. Always re-mail new offers or add-ons to your responders. Once you have a customer or potential customer, hold on to them. Provide them with the product and service necessary to keep them doing business with you instead of someone else. Keep those “back end offers” flowing.
6. Most of what you have heard as being mail order gospel is wrong.

How to do it and what your return will be? No one knows, and that’s a fact. No one can tell you what you will do on any mailing. All they may be able to tell you is what they have done, and they may be stretching the truth. TEST! TEST! TEST! You have to test it yourself by doing the mailings and trying the lists and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t. Once you find a list that works, make sure any additional names you rent from the same list are really from the same list and just as fresh, then run with it. YOU NEED A BROKER YOU CAN TRUST TO HELP YOU.
7. Believe it or not, what you are doing, what this is, is a business.
Treat it like a business. So many mail order marketers treat what they are doing as if it were a hobby, or that “if you MAIL IT, they will come”. These folks are in for a big surprise and disappointment. Doing mail order right requires just as much effort as doing any other kind of business. Research it. The library and local bookstores are your best friend.
8. Carefully consider if you really want to send bulk mail as opposed to first class.
While bulk mail is less expensive, there are some things to consider:
A. If you send bulk mail, your letters will not be forwarded.
B. Bulk mail is less likely to be opened.
C. From what we’ve been told, bulk mail often languishes out of the way in some dark corner of your post office. We have also heard, though we don’t know for sure, that bulk mail is often given the old heave-ho, instead of being delivered.
YOU WILL NEED TO TEST.
9. Your mail piece should be a letter, or look like a letter.
The chances of someone actually looking at your mail piece, are better if it looks like a personal letter. Of course, that letter has to be good copy in order to get the order or response. Post cards can work for generating leads or inquiries, but they don’t have the space needed for the length of copy usually used to sell a product. If you print “Please Forward” on the envelope, the mail piece will be forwarded if there is a forward address. Otherwise, it will be returned to you if not deliverable to the envelope address.
10. If you are doing an Opportunity Mailing, use Buyer’s lists from a reliable company that will work with you to improve your chances for success.
A “Buyer’s List”, is made up of people who have already spent money responding to an opportunity like yours, and previously paid out money for the product or opportunity. A “Seeker’s List” will not do it for you. These people are tire kickers, and will waste your time.