The Mail Campaign
(Originally from SIGNAL, Winter 2001)

Generating donations through a mail program is one of the most cost effective way to raise revenue. It is also a great way to communicate with your donor and potential donors. Many libraries of all sizes are having good results from their mail programs. Which proves what we’ve always known – people love their libraries and they will support them – we just need to ask.

Some basic principles of direct mail campaigns include:

• mail campaigns are an investment in the long term, and often take a number of mailings to pay for themselves;
• they are a good way to get lots of small donations;
• large scale campaigns are used by causes that have mass appeal and general public awareness;
• cost-effective direct mail campaigns are dependent on volume, though you can start small and grow;
• they are a good way to begin the donor relationship;
• most people will give as often as they are asked;
• direct mail is a continuous process that requires attention to detail, tracking many elements, and meticulous record-keeping;
• managing a campaign that is dependent on volunteers to execute, takes planning and time;
• communicating messages to your donors through mail campaigns requires thoughtful development, and should reflect your organizational vision and culture;
• personalizing letters will increase the return rate; and,
• acquisition of new donors through prospect mailings can be an expensive endeavour.

Components of a Direct Mail Package

The standard direct mail piece consists of at least 4 elements and could contain more.

Outer Envelope

The outer envelope is arguable the most important element of the package. If the donor or prospective donor is not moved to open the envelope, then the ask is worthless. It is estimated that you’ve got 3 seconds to make an impact before the recipient decides to open it or not. There are many things you can do to make your mail package unique, including using an odd-size envelope, a real stamp, using coloured paper, or printed messages. Probably most important is if the address information is correct.

Appeal Letter

The appeal letter should be persuasive and convey some sense of urgency. The need for funds should be clearly articulated, and a specific amount should be requested. Often amount levels are equated with impact – ie. a $100 gift will purchase 4 audio books. The letter should be on organizational letterhead. It should be typed or printed and made as easy to read as possible – this refers not only to design elements but also to the language. Using jargon that is not generally understood by people outside the library should be avoided. You can use underlining and highlighting for emphasis. Post-scripts at the end of a letter are very effective ways to re-state a key message – often people will read those first. An appropriate person should sign the letter – if the message is about library collection then the librarian should sign, if it’s about a major campaign the chair of the board or the campaign chair should sign.

Mail programs are getting easier for organizations to do in-house due to computer technology. A simple mail merge can be managed quite easily with a word processing software.

Response Coupon

The response coupon is the third required element. Often is has preprinted donor information on it that will provide gift-amount options on it. It could also include opportunities to join a gift club, or chose a monthly donation option. You can also provide a request for information such as a mention in wills or organizational information. The response coupon is filled out by the donor and returned to the charity.

Reply Envelope

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your mail campaign, a reply envelope included with the package is recommended. The envelope will have the library’s address preprinted on it so that the donor doesn’t have to scramble to find out where the response coupon should go. If you provide a postage paid return envelope you will increase the rate of return, which should offset the cost of providing return postage. Libraries that have mail programs have had good success with a combined response form and envelope, rather than a stand alone reply envelope.

Enclosure or Lift Letter

The lift letter is not a required element, and will add to your print costs, but it can be a very effective way to support your appeal letter. The lift letter is often a special appeal from an honorary spokesperson on personal stationery. This letter can be printed on different colour paper and a different size from the appeal letter to draw attention to it. The message is brief, but brings a very personal touch usually from a well known person. Or you can use a reprinted newspaper article about your organization with a photograph.

Premium

Another way to encourage a gift from a donor, is to provide one such as a calendar, address labels, book marks or note cards. These premiums, those more expensive to produce, are often very successful in getting a response. Other ways of triggering a gift include promotional lottery tickets or toy jokes.

Recommended Mail Strategies:

The organization should be mailing to its house list four times a year.

Don’t be reticent about mailing appeals to your "house" list – the list of current donors . Vary the messages and the appeals, as different mailings produce different responses. The response to one house mailing may be around 20-30%. The combined returns over the course of a year of four mailings should produce around a 50% repeat rate. Your house list should be generating between 60-80% as a renewal rate. Industry figures show that the repeat-gift group - those people who will give more than once in a yearly cycle - 60% of them will give 3 times in a year.

The risk - what you need to determine in your fund development strategy - is if you can afford to mail that many times when you’re just getting started, and how that process is going to work. You also need to take into consideration that between these four mail-outs are thank you notes, tax receipts, and any other communications to update donors on library activity. Your donors should not hear from you only when you need their money! And the mail program should fit in around your communications strategy.

Encourage the monthly giving option.

The monthly giving plan has proven to increase the size of donations, and decrease donor attrition. Since most monthly giving is done by credit card, this method of donating has many benefits, such as consistency and assurance in cashflow. There is also the tendency to give more by credit card than by personal cheques. This option should be featured somehow in your mailing over the next year, until you reach a level around 20% of current donors on the plan.

This group can be a sub-committee of the Board working with key volunteers, or a group of Friends. What’s important is that there is a group who will take responsibility for getting the letters developed and implementing the mail process.

The process for developing a mail campaign would look like this:

1) the working committee determines the goals of the mailing and the audience, and gets approval for the budget;
2) create the list, deciding if it’s the house list, a rented list, or a list exchange;
3) create, design and write the package, determine all the elements, such as the reply envelope, the coupon, the outside envelope and the letterhead;
4) assemble the package, either by mail house or with volunteers;
5) mail out; and,
6) follow up administration, including receipting and thank you notes, updating the database and adding any new names to the house list.

Personalize the letters as much as possible.

One of the most important aspects of direct mail is to do everything possible to "warm up" the letter. This will increase the response rate dramatically. A hand-written thank you at the bottom of the letter, a hand-written PS, a personal salutation, a live stamp - all will make a big difference in how the letter is treated. Also, using a postage paid, business reply envelope will increase the response rate.

Some components that constitute an effective letter for a mail campaign are:

write to just one person;
focus on the donor’s motivation for giving;
describe the nature of your organization’s work;
define the need;
tell how the need is being met;
get the reader personally involved;
show you have widespread support;
show what the gift can accomplish;
promise a reward; and
ask for a contribution.

The letter and package should reflect your organization.

Ensure that the tone of the letter and the physical presentation of the package reflec your organization. A direct mail package that you’d receive from a major health-related charity, that looks pre-printed and mass produced is probably not a model you should follow when beginning a mail program. For the outgoing letters, you should include library news, volunteer profiles, programming information - let the donor know something of the personality of the library. Thank you letters could be replaced with note cards featuring the library. The note cards could be hand-written from Board members who are responsible for stewardship for that level of donation. This could be an achievable method of integrating a one-to-one relationship between Board and donor.

It is also more meaningful to the letter reader to receive something that has obviously taken some time and care to create. "Institutional" direct mail doesn’t really reflect the library’s culture. And I would recommend ways in which you are able to maintain the same level of communication, but that are simpler, warmer, and more cost-effective. There may come a point where you’ll have to decide about the costs of using a mail house to manage your campaigns, but even at that level, you should take care that the package being developed reflects your values.

Consider using telephone follow up.

A cost-effective way to follow up a mail campaign would be to do it by telephone rather than a second mailing. This would be consistent with more personal contact with donors. For those who have not responded yet to the mail request, it is a good way clean up your database information, and it could also prompt an increased rate of return. For those who have responded with a donation, you can do your thanking in person, and put a "face" to the organization.

But don’t go into a telephone campaign unprepared. Make sure your volunteers have proper training, and are prepared to answer question about the library. And absolutely, they must have the latest donor information in front of them to refer to.

Prospecting for new donors and reactivating lapsed donors

According to standard industry practice you can expect about 25% of current names to never respond to future appeals. Consequently, you are constantly going to have to find other names to replace those to keep your revenue stable.

Donor acquisition through direct mail campaigns generally occurs with list trading and purchasing. I would suggest concentrating your mail activity on developing and maximizing your house list. This would be achieved through an increased number of mailings.

You also want to use special events as donor acquisition opportunities. There should be a balance between the different ways of acquiring new donors, as special events are the least cost-effective way to raise funds. And you don’t want to be totally dependent on special event fundraising, or you risk wearing out all your volunteers and you risk never making any money.

A special event should be retained as part of your fundraising calendar, as a good way to draw-in donors who might not donate through other campaigns, or who don’t equate buying a ticket with a donation. There could be significant benefits a long time after the event through goodwill generated from a rewarding and well-executed event. If you’ve delivered your organization’s key messages to a new audience, the occasion will have achieved a level of success.

Donor Upgrading

The key to building your house list with repeat appeals and acquisition techniques is to retain interest from your donors, and move them into a higher level of giving. The appeal letter could ask current donors to increase their gift by 10% to match the increased need. If you’ve a sophisticated relational database to work with, you can provide your donor with actual numbers from past gifts, and indicate what a 10% increase in their giving would be. With increased communication, warmer messages to current donors, as well as trying to personalize letters and directly calling donors, you should have good success at upgrading your donors.

This has been a brief overview of a mail program highlighting the fundamentals. Libraries that had tried direct mail campaigns have had good success. In the [fall 1999] issue of Signal, the London Public Library mail program was featured. [link] But small libraries can do it too – Smiths Falls Public Library has a very successful mail program.

You can start small – just a group of willing volunteers writing to their friends on behalf of the library can get a mail program going. Remember that a gift is just the beginning of the relationship, and that once you’ve received the donation you must continue to build on it. Newsletters and updates are very important elements of a well-rounded mail program. So next time you’re volunteer fundraising committee is considering a special event, remind them of how much work it is and suggest that they try a mail campaign instead!