Sorry, but It’s Not the Economy

Either way, she's crossing a boundary, and it's up to us to make that crossing easy for her.

Unfortunately, too many of us can't help her across because we can't even cross the boundary within our own organizations. The mail and website were created and exist in two different worlds …

• Direct mail, created in the rough-and-tumble real world of direct response, looks and feels one way. It's about straightforward solutions to serious problems. It's urgent, concrete, clear. With rough, simple, old-fashioned design.
• The website, created in the fantasy world of marketing, has almost nothing in common with it. It's all abstract brand promises. High-flown claims. Modern design.

The donor who moves from the mail to the Web might conclude she's in the wrong place, that the website she's found is not connected to the mail that's in her hand. Worse, she might decide the 
organization is duplicitous, saying one 
thing in one place and another thing in another place.