Gold Awards Special Mention Honorees

Tube mailings are usually pretty well-represented in our awards submissions, but this year we only saw one. What was special about it is that rather than containing a simple tchotchke to entice a donation, the offering from the National WASP WWII Museum acted as an invitation to a special event. Potential donors/attendees were asked to sign a card that was placed on the American flag rolled up inside the tube and return the card and flag (and ideally, a gift) so they could be symbolically present at a Memorial Day fly-in that was attended by 20 WASP. The returned flags were used to decorate the National WASP WWII Museum and then handed out to attendees. It was an expensive mailing ($3.24 per letter), but it was still the museum's most successful mailing of the year. More than 16 percent (2,210) of the recipients sent back the flag with an average gift of more than $50, netting just more than $65,000 ($4.89 per letter).