Do brochures — long accused of lacking intimacy — have a place in direct-mail fundraising?

By Jerry Huntsinger

In all the times I’ve seen a brochure tested, I would guess that it lost about 80 percent of the time. And other people I’ve known through the years say about the same thing.

But there are some underlying dynamics here about what makes a mail package successful, all related to the weakness of the classic brochure and, in essence, what works and what doesn’t.