http://www.articlealley.com en-us editorial@articlealley.com William Strunk wrote a short, valuable essay on the need to omit needless words: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_465092_50.html 31st January 2008 Do your letter proposals generate business? Or do they often miss the mark? I've learned that letter proposals must do four things. Incorporate these four steps into every letter proposal and you'll see improvements. 1. Focus on your prospect'... http://www.articlealley.com/article_461017_15.html 24th January 2008 Want to learn a vital lesson in public speaking from the CIA? Make eye contact with your listeners. Failure to make eye contact is often a sign of deceit, says Lindsay Moran, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and author of Blowing My Cov... http://www.articlealley.com/article_456866_50.html 22nd January 2008 Do your donation request letters lack a protagonist? The most compelling appeal letters feature a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, that captures the donor's attention and makes the appeal human, moving and profitable. The most memorable novels, movies ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_72687_15.html 16th July 2006 Know one of the quickest ways to boost the effectiveness of your direct mail sales letters? Mail two letters instead of one, in the same envelope. The second letter is called a lift note. You slip it in your direct mail package to "lift" (increase) res... http://www.articlealley.com/article_72022_15.html 13th July 2006 Successful fundraising letters are exciting to read. They take you to crack houses, battlefields, logging protests, prisons, floods and other places you will never set foot yourself. Effective donation request letters show you the organizations you suppor... http://www.articlealley.com/article_70301_15.html 07th July 2006 You will succeed at business-to-business direct mail sales lead generation if you master three calculations, and your response rate is not one of them. Your response rate tells you only a small part of what you are doing correctly. I am assuming that y... http://www.articlealley.com/article_70014_15.html 05th July 2006 Back in 1985, which I now realize is more than 20 years ago, a homeless man stood at the corner of College and Yonge streets, in downtown Toronto, begging for money. This was his cry: "Quarter! Quarter! Dime! . . . Nickel! . . . Eeeeeeeeven a penny wil... http://www.articlealley.com/article_68547_15.html 30th June 2006 Two of the greatest challenges for a company doing direct mail sales lead generation are getting attention and creating attractive offers. A compelling package with a poor offer will flop. And a poor package with a compelling offer won't even get opened. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_67569_15.html 28th June 2006 Fundraising letters are about people. People talk. So your fundraising letters should include the voices of people. In a novel, the characters come alive only after you hear them talk. What they say, how they say it, when they say it, where they say it... http://www.articlealley.com/article_65785_15.html 23rd June 2006 The number-one advantage of dimensional mailers is that they get noticed. Amidst the #10 envelopes, postcards and other traditional mail that your prospects receive daily, boxes, cylinders and lumpy oversize envelopes stand out. The number-two advanta... http://www.articlealley.com/article_65032_15.html 21st June 2006 When the Argentine army surrendered in June of 1982, ending the Falklands War, some Royal Marines discovered that the quickest way to get the attention of stubborn Argentine prisoners, since we did not speak their language, and they did not speak ours, wa... http://www.articlealley.com/article_64591_15.html 18th June 2006 My wife received an irresistible offer in the mail the other day. So she didn't resist. The publisher of a health newsletter offered her eight free reports in exchange for trying out the publication risk free. She could read the sample issue and, if sh... http://www.articlealley.com/article_63482_15.html 16th June 2006 How would your next fundraising letter perform if Agatha Christie wrote it? "Alan," you're whispering, "Agatha Christie is dead." "I know," say I. "But I'm trying to make a point here. So bear with me." Agatha Christie is the world's best-known m... http://www.articlealley.com/article_61698_15.html 09th June 2006 I once wrote a direct mail piece that generated a dreadful response rate. It was too high. My client was a brand new stadium in Canada's capital city, Ottawa. The stadium featured luxury suites that businesses could rent or lease to entertain prospects... http://www.articlealley.com/article_60567_15.html 07th June 2006 Want to improve your sales letters? Compare them with newspaper classified ads for salespeople. What employers look for in a salesperson, you should look for in a sales letter. 1. Self-starter The best salespeople require the least amount of su... http://www.articlealley.com/article_59838_15.html 04th June 2006 Your fundraising letters will be more dramatic if you write them like a novel. Every good novel follows a simple outline: conflict, development, resolution. The novel opens with a main character in conflict. The main character deals with the conflict. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_59279_15.html 03rd June 2006 What would happen if the author of The Da Vinci Code wrote your next direct mail fundraising appeal letter? Would your letter be boring? Predictable? Forgettable? I'll give the answer in a minute. Your donors will no longer respond to lack... http://www.articlealley.com/article_57860_15.html 28th May 2006 The best guarantee to offer your direct mail buyer is one that hurts. You, that is. Like you, your potential buyer lives in a rip-off society where merchants sell shoddy products and vendors do not honour their promises. In this kind of selling and buy... http://www.articlealley.com/article_56279_3.html 24th May 2006 When is the best time to recover a lapsed donor? Before they lapse. Using a "pre-lapsed donor letter." I heard recently of a non-profit organization that mails a special letter to all donors who are at risk of lapsing. This organization has found that ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_54565_15.html 20th May 2006 The best advice I can give you for writing successful fundraising letters is to act as if your donors are obese. Really obese. Imagine, for example, that they struggle with their weight every single day. Imagine that they hate the way they look. Imagin... http://www.articlealley.com/article_52687_15.html 12th May 2006 The most powerful headline I ever read and acted upon was a negative headline. It changed my life. Yet most books on direct mail copywriting will tell you to cast your headlines, overlines and Johnson Boxes always in the positive. But sometimes being n... http://www.articlealley.com/article_51770_15.html 10th May 2006 My brother-in-law says you should be thankful for truckers because everything you buy was handled at some point by a trucker. LoWayne is a trucker, so he's biased. But I think he's right anyway. You depend on truckers for your life. And, if you are a d... http://www.articlealley.com/article_50864_15.html 07th May 2006 Q. What is a premium? A. In direct mail fundraising letters, a premium is an item offered to a donor, usually at no charge, to encourage the donor to make a donation. Q. What's the difference between front-end and back-end premiums? A. Premiums that... http://www.articlealley.com/article_50202_15.html 05th May 2006 When is the best time to stop sending direct mail donation appeal letters to your lapsed donors? Never. Dropping lapsed donors and members from your mailings is rarely cost-effective. Sending them all of your regular mailings is not cost-effective e... http://www.articlealley.com/article_48815_23.html 30th April 2006 Lilly Tomlin, the American comic, once said: "When I was growing up, I wanted to be a somebody. Now I realize I should have been more specific." In direct response advertising and direct mail selling, as in life, specifics sell. Generalities don't. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_47723_15.html 27th April 2006 I have a client whose direct mail fundraising program is in trouble. I think you can profit from his predicament. I know he is going to. The development officers at his non-profit organization are doing plenty of things right. They attract new supporte... http://www.articlealley.com/article_47343_15.html 25th April 2006 Last time I checked, there were 25,000 direct mail response lists and 50,000 compiled lists currently on the market. Among all of these lists, you'll find hundreds that work for your product or service. Actually, you likely won't find them. Locating the b... http://www.articlealley.com/article_45106_15.html 20th April 2006 I once had a friend who used to bid me farewell by exclaiming, "Up 'yer kilt!" Where Jock is today and how many pals he still has I cannot tell. But his original and startling phrase reminds me of a vital truth in direct mail fundraising: How you thank yo... http://www.articlealley.com/article_43352_15.html 13th April 2006 In the Good Old Days of direct mail, which is to say, before 1997 and the advent of the Internet, I and other direct mail marketers agonized over what to put "above the fold." Maybe you did as well. That tiny top panel on a sales letter or self-ma... http://www.articlealley.com/article_43102_15.html 12th April 2006 Your direct mail fundraising program should have three goals. Goal 1. Acquires donors If your organization is typical, you lose around 15 percent of your donors each year. They simply stop responding to your appeals. Fifteen percent is avera... http://www.articlealley.com/article_42418_15.html 07th April 2006 Your landing page conversions will increase once you answer three of the most common questions asked by visitors who receive your direct mail invitation to visit their website. Q1. Am I at the correct place? What you sell in your direct mail pi... http://www.articlealley.com/article_41776_15.html 05th April 2006 Do you tell this lie in your sales letters? "Visit our website for more information." Too many sales letters invite prospects to visit websites that actually contain less information than what's found in the sales letter. This makes no sense ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_40260_15.html 01st April 2006 Have you ever played The Mennonite Game? When two Mennonites meet for the first time, they soon start asking each other questions designed to discover who and what they share in common. The game goes something like this: Moses: You look like you're Men... http://www.articlealley.com/article_39867_15.html 01st April 2006 A proven way to reactivate lapsed donors is to ask them why they have stopped giving. You can do this with a survey that you enclose in your mailing. Or you can leave space on the reply device for a few questions. According to Stephen Hitchcock, in his... http://www.articlealley.com/article_38558_15.html 25th March 2006 In B2B direct mail lead generation, as your volume of leads goes up, your quality goes down, and vice versa. The people in marketing prefer volume. They want the most leads for their dollar. The people in sales—the folks who must follow up on the ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_38082_15.html 22nd March 2006 The most important letter in direct mail fundraising never aks for a donation. Thank-you letters increase donor loyalty, strengthen relationships and increase your chances of receiving more gifts in the future, including major gifts and legacy gifts. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_36948_15.html 17th March 2006 In business-to-business direct mail lead generation, sell your offer, not your product. This sounds like lethal advice to a sales person, and it is, to a salesperson responsible for closing sales and meeting quota. But your direct mail is not responsib... http://www.articlealley.com/article_36246_15.html 15th March 2006 In business-to-business direct mail lead generation, letters invariably outpull self-mailers, including postcards. Your sales message belongs in an envelope for a number of good reasons. 1. Better privacy An envelope announces to the recipient,... http://www.articlealley.com/article_35307_15.html 12th March 2006 One of the shortcomings of direct mail fundraising is that donors are usually thought of as numbers and not as people. Each donor or member in the database has a unique donor number that identifies that individual. You and I are tempted to examine each do... http://www.articlealley.com/article_34750_15.html 11th March 2006 Do lift notes still lift response rates in business-to-business mailings? Yes, as long as they stand out. A lift note, of course, is an extra component slipped into a direct mail package to lift response. It's also called a lift letter. Publishers cal... http://www.articlealley.com/article_32874_15.html 05th March 2006 The most important letter in direct mail fundraising never asks for a gift. Ever. The thank-you letters that you mail to donors have one goal: to thank your donors for their generosity and support. Yes, your gift acknowledgement letters, notes and c... http://www.articlealley.com/article_32187_15.html 03rd March 2006 Last time I checked, there were 25,000 response lists and 50,000 compiled lists currently on the market. Among all of these lists, you'll find hundreds that work for fundraising appeals. Actually, you likely won't find them. Locating the best names for yo... http://www.articlealley.com/article_31724_15.html 24th February 2006 Aspiring copywriter, be warned. Don't expect to "retire this year and still make more money than most doctors." Paul Hollingshead and The American Writers & Artists Institute say you can. According to their website, all that you need to do is take Mich... http://www.articlealley.com/article_31288_15.html 22nd February 2006 Writing a terrific fundraising letter is a waste of time if your donor throws your entire package in the trash unopened. And that happens more often than any of us dare to think about. That's why your envelope is so crucial to your success. You... http://www.articlealley.com/article_30339_15.html 17th February 2006 Your direct mail fundraising results never lie. But they mislead you if you let them. I worked as Director of Development for a national charity that held a lavish fundraising banquet each year. The staff, from the executive director down to the rec... http://www.articlealley.com/article_29885_15.html 16th February 2006 Successful sales people dress their best when in front of prospects. And so do successful sales letters. Here are some tested sales letter design and layout tips, some of them from direct mail designer Ted Kikoler, and excerpted from The Lead Generation H... http://www.articlealley.com/article_29519_15.html 16th February 2006 Don't ask me how I know, but in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings you'll sometimes hear a member mention "The Elephant in the Living Room." In AA circles, a family member's drinking problem is the elephant in the living room that everyone sees, that everyone ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_29285_15.html 14th February 2006 Will your business-to-business direct mail package ever produce a standing ovation? It might. When you mail an effective invitation to a seminar, workshop, awards show or other live event, you literally move people—out of their seats and into your... http://www.articlealley.com/article_27927_15.html 09th February 2006 I am doing what you do, sitting at my computer, trying to get my thoughts out of my head and into a written form that will help you make a decision. In this particular case, I am trying to write a few intelligent remarks about sounding conversational on p... http://www.articlealley.com/article_26422_15.html 01st February 2006