24th December 2005
One temptation in writing fundraising thank-you letters is to make your organization the star of the letter. You feel pressure to tell your donors how terrific you are, how cost-effective you are or how broke you are. You are tempted to brag about your ac...
20th December 2005
Direct mail fundraising is a numbers game. A game that changes all the time. Who could have predicted the advent of online giving? Or the popularity of sweepstakes? Or the rise of a generation of young donors whose primary method of communication is text ...
17th December 2005
If the most important part of any business-to-business direct mail package is the list, how can you be sure that you have a good list before you drop your money (and your reputation) in the mailbox? Answer: Ask the right questions before you rent that lis...
10th December 2005
I have a brother-in-law who farms and drives a 16-wheeler for a living. When I told him that I start each business day with a blank computer screen that I must fill with at least 1,000 words by noon, he almost fainted. He says he could never do it because...
09th December 2005
I don't relish being proven wrong. But a while back I sat down to discover who my best clients were. I wanted to increase my revenues. I figured that the best way to do that was to discover who my best clients were and to then go after more firms that wer...
07th December 2005
The first time I was shelled by enemy artillery, I learned a vital lesson that applies to the success of your fundraising letters.
I was lying in a slit trench on Mount Wall, about 35 kilometres west of the town of Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. The...
01st December 2005
Here's something to test.
Take your existing business-to-business direct mail package and make just one change: put two windows on the mailing envelope instead of one. Mail it and see what happens.
According to direct mail author, publisher and spe...
28th November 2005
New donors are a lot closer than you may think. And
persuading them to make that vital first donation
need not be as hard—or as
expensive—as acquiring
them in other ways.
But before you rent a list of names or drop anything
in the mail, exami...
24th November 2005
The secret to success in business-to-business direct
mail lead generation is testing. I have hunches. You
have hunches. But testing settles the debate. When
you test your package against my package and we
measure the results, we know for certain w...
16th November 2005
Do you need to reach wealthy prospects using direct mail? Then work on your list. Who you mail to (your list) is the single most important thing that determines your success.
There are two main ways to target affluent buyers: where they abide, and what...
14th November 2005
The most important thing about your donation
thank-you letters is not what you say or how you
say it but how quickly you say it.
According to Stephen Hitchcock in Open
Immediately!, for many donors, a brief thank-you
note pre-printed with just ...
09th November 2005
Is Direct Mail Useless for DMers?
Is direct mail useless at helping direct mail businesses
generate leads?
That's the question I was asked last week by a
reader of Alan Sharpe's B2B Direct Mail Tactics
newsletter. Here is her unusual challenge...
