Spinning Date Into Donor Gold

“Our direct mail acquisition program is very mission focused. We don’t do premiums at all,” Whorton notes. “So we knew we had to focus more on higher segments [of the file], in terms of likelihood of giving.”

But the biggest benefit for CRS, Whorton says, was to purge hardcore non-responders dwelling at the bottom of the file who clearly were annoyed, rather than engaged, by solicitations. The organization’s acquisition and retention efforts simply were based on outdated information.