Direct Mail

All donors are not created equal. As in the for-profit world, the most financially valuable ones are the ones who undertake long-term relationships with an organization — those who embrace a nonprofit’s mission and make donations again and again. In a perfect world, fundraisers would be able to discern these individuals from the 70 percent of newly acquired donors whose first gifts are also their last, and invest in them accordingly.

Ah, autumn. The crunch of falling leaves under your feet. The crisp, cool air. Football. And the start of — you guessed it — fundraising season. This year, like every other, I fully expect my mailbox and inbox to be chockablock with the kind of clichés I used to start this column. You can call it moldering messaging. Yuck. Let’s make this year different. It’s time to turn over a new leaf. Cliché No. 1 I have a good place to begin. The No. 1 cliché we need to banish this fall is the “it’s fundraising season” or “it’s that time again”

Why would anyone in his right mind suggest using humor in a fundraising campaign to help fight a terrible disease or address an important social cause? Ask any conventional direct-mail expert, and he’ll tell you humor is one of the quickest ways to kill your campaign. But in the 27 years I’ve been creating mailings, I’ve found humor to be an extremely effective tool for breaking through — and creating an instantly warm connection with people. In my experience, humor is perhaps the most effective way to humanize any organization. And when you do that, people begin to care. And respond. The problem

“How to Look Good Naked” … “Yard Crashers” … “Pimp My Ride” … “Extreme Makeover” … “Kitchen Nightmares” … “What Not to Wear” … “This Old House” … “Makeover Manor” — we are a society obsessed with transformation, renovation and beautification projects. And while I can’t match the pimpologists’ promise to “turn your hooptie into a dope-ass, date magnet,” I see plenty of letter copy that could benefit from a talented wordsmith’s makeover. I don’t mean changing the offer — although lackluster offers also abound. Instead, I suggest restyling the language to get your offer noticed, in a good way. Your letter’s

Judging for the Gold Awards was a little more low-key this year, it seems. (We think it might be because the ASPCA’s Steve Froehlich couldn’t make it. But please … don’t tell him we said so.) Also, there was no hotly contested tie for Package of the Year that had us seeking tiebreaker after tiebreaker like last year. But the competition was just as fierce.

Earlier this year, I gave myself a whisper-thin, featherweight notebook computer for my birthday. I am giddy in love with this skinny beauty and its elegant performance, heart and soul. I know now why the brand has a cult following. The setup process was blissfully easy, and after I registered my notebook online, I received a confirmation e-mail that made me smile. “Hi. Welcome … We’re just as excited as you are,” the headline read. “You can’t possibly be,” I thought, having discovered in less than an hour after I powered it up how the notebook and the brand’s latest operating system would

On a cold and windy Wednesday afternoon a few months ago, I became a rabid online activist. Curious about the current state of multichannel marketing and integration efforts, and, more specifically, about what nonprofit organizations are doing to convert online action takers to donors and members, I signed petition after petition. I took pledges. I contacted my elected representatives in Congress. I sent letters to the White House and the United Nations. And I signed up for a slew of e-news offers and action alerts. It was an exhausting, but illuminating, exercise. Determined to do my part to advance the cause of integrated, multichannel

There’s a lot to be said about failure. Mainly that it stinks. No, seriously — failure helps you appreciate success a little more, right? And on a less existential level, it can teach you a lot about what not to do next time around. That’s no more apparent than in the world of direct-mail fundraising efforts. And from what we hear, it happens to the best of them. So to prove you’re not alone when one of your ideas isn’t as all-fire successful as you had hoped, here are a few failure stories from fundraising pros. Hear Ye, Hear Ye … Don’t Traumatize Your

Recession is looming. Direct mail is dying. E-mail has fallen short of its bright promise. Donors are cynical. Contributions are drying up faster than the ice caps are melting. It seems like everywhere you turn these days, prophets of doom are predicting dark times ahead for fundraising. If you’re not careful, you might almost start to believe that things aren’t going so well. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath. Yes, there is cause for concern. But there also are plenty of good reasons to hold on to your seat and ride out the storm.

I’ve been tracking an unusual renewal series as it unfolds — a purely postal mail campaign reminiscent of coordinated multichannel campaigns. Today, savvy nonprofits are exploiting all the multichannel possibilities and using e-mail to bookend renewal and special-appeal campaigns sent by postal mail, for example — alerting the donor that an important mailing is coming and following up after its projected arrival with another e-mail inquiring about its receipt and calling for action. The renewal series I’ve been monitoring is using this same strategy with a sequence of physical pre- and post-mailings around a Big Deal package. Building the anticipation The pre-package before