Premiums are vital to many direct-mail, donor-acquisition progams. But address labels alone might not do the job.

By Amy Koop

At the end of the day, it truly becomes an issue of an ROI calculation, one that takes into account all factors of a package’s performance and cost. Most importantly, a careful consideration of a program’s goals at any given time is crucial to the analysis: When driving donor numbers is the key factor, a premium package almost always will achieve this goal faster than a non-premium package. If overall revenue is the key metric, we must calculate both the up-front and lifetime value of a donor acquired by a particular package in order to decide the appropriate strategy.