D.C. Nonprofit Conference Roundup: Getting the Most Out of Lists to Improve Direct Mail Acquisition Results

The goal of optimization is simple: Mail appropriate acquisition packages to people most likely to respond. This improves results and decreases costs.

Angelo Licursi, director, account management, at ParadyszMatera, explored many ways to improve list selection and mailing. First, if you have different acquisition packages, he recommended, analyze results to determine if certain lists respond better to one package, and mail accordingly. For example, some lists might respond better to a premium mailing than others. Another technique to determine which package to mail is to analyze past mail files and find people who have been mailed several times, but never contributed. Then, test packages to those individuals.