Resuscitating Your Campaign

Iris Caralla of direct-marketing firm The List Experts identifies several key factors in reaching out specifically to healthcare professionals:

• Healthcare professionals respond well to health, children’s welfare and humanitarian appeals.

• Healthcare professionals are educated and compassionate, and they all have the need to help others.

• Keep your appeal clear and point out the humanitarian aspects. Let the potential donor know exactly where/how the money will be used.

• Keep in mind this demographic group gets many fundraising appeals, and getting them to actually take the time to read your mail piece is one of the biggest challenges. For that reason, it’s best to reach these professionals at home.

• In addition to mailing campaigns to the home address of healthcare professionals, testing lists that are “out of the box” as well as testing different segments of lists already used can help boost response.

Christine Weiser is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and publisher of Philadelphia Stories, a nonprofit literary-arts publication.