Direct Mail

Writing fundraising copy should be detailed and painstaking for you. Reading it should be fast and easy for your donor.

Adding some well-done visual design is great way to make your mailing stand out. Join NonProfit PRO sister brand Direct Marketing IQ Editorial Assistant Jeremy Zimmerman as he shows you how to take cues from three specific pieces from the California Institute of the Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art and Brilliant Graphics. To see these mailings, as well as thousands of others, login to your account at whosmailingwhat.com. If you're not a member, find out more and signup here.

Fundraisers, take note: Don't make the same mistake GEICO did in this direct-mail piece. Make sure you always know your audience.

Variable data printing (VDP) can be leveraged to make a direct-mail piece stand out to a prospect. In this video, Direct Marketing IQ's Paul Bobnak takes a look at how Patient First, a medical care provider with the mission to make access to quality medical care as convenient and cost-effective as possible, uses VDP on personalized maps in its direct mail.

Freemiums and premiums have long been staples of direct-mail fundraising. In this video, Direct Marketing IQ's Paul Bobnak takes a look at this practice with a little twist. He reviews the tried-and-true method of address labels included in a Paralyzed Veterans of America mailing and then lays out how both the Sierra Club and Doctors Without Borders utilize maps as engaging freemiums for donors.

It's the holidays, and many nonprofits are using this time of year to their advantage when mailing prospects and donors. Peggy Hatch, group president of FundRaising Success sister brand the Target Marketing Group, compares a pair of mailings from two housing nonprofits: Project HOPE and Habitat for Humanity.

If you're a fundraising copywriter, you already have most of the tools you need to go from good to great. The rest are available to you. All it takes to get them, and the persuasive power that goes with them, is a lot of hard work.

In a world pushing e-solicitations — for businesses and charities alike — does good, old-fashioned paper mail matter? My experience says yes.

Food and hunger nonprofits City Harvest and Philabundance utilize the "brown paper bag" outer envelope technique in these direct-mail fundraising campaigns. In this video, I show viewers how each of these nonprofits gets donors engaged in the packages in different ways. For access to more mailings like the ones seen here, visit www.whosmailingwhat.com.

This video takes a look at three ways political direct-mail campaigns can stand out from the crowd, win donors and build engagement with voters using direct mail.