What Goes On in the Mailbox?

When I was new to fundraising, one thing about direct mail really bugged me: response rates. I’d look at the 5 percent to 8 percent response rates that are common and think, “That’s fine, but what about the 92 percent to 95 percent failure rate?”

The way I figured it, responses were “yes” votes and nonresponses were “no” votes. Even a very strong performance — say 15 percent — seemed to me like a landslide loss of 85 percent. According to my “voting” logic, any response rate below 50 percent was a failure.