Four Tips for Acquiring Donors With Premiums

1. Don't measure success based on the cost to acquire a name. Instead, calculate by package how much you can afford to invest in a new donor. At Mercy Home, we've found that it typically costs us $6 to acquire a name using a greeting card package, while it costs more than $20 to acquire a name using a non-premium package. However, the one-year value of a non-premium donor is almost three times greater than that of a card-acquired donor. That means we're willing to invest much more upfront to acquire non-premium donors, knowing that the investment will pay off in the long run. Premiums are still an important source of donors for us (because nonpremium donors are much harder to acquire), but we're very careful not to invest too much in getting them on the file.