happy donors

The #2 Secret to Writing Fundraising Letters that Maximize Results

Dan — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:34:44 +0000

This is the second post trying to better identify specific strategies/tactics that consistently enable one copy platform to beat a fundraising control. (The first is here.)

The essential issue: What is the fundraising appeal really about?

Organizations — particularly board members and other internal reviewers — think the appeal should be about the organization itself and its mission.

Nope. The more effective fundraising communication will really be about the action you want the recipient to take.

Consider:

– The purpose of your letter is not education. You’re mailing to people who are already familiar with your organization and its mission. They’re already donors. Or you’re talking to rented names of folks with a known affinity for your cause.

– You’re not trying to talk the recipient into giving you money. Can you convince an indifferent reader to part with her hard-earned money? No. A letter is not a sufficiently powerful medium to do that.

Why do some acquisition lists fail utterly? Because these people are poorly qualified. They don’t really have an affinity for your cause. And you simply can’t convert someone with the written word.

– All you’re really doing is prompting people who are sympathetic to your cause to make a donation today.

Your donors know about you, understand your mission, and support it. They have a demonstrated predisposition to make a contribution to your cause.

A good rental list has a good percentage who are dedicated to a cause that strongly overlaps with your own, so they share this predisposition.

So the purpose of your letter is not to educate or convince, it’s to prompt them to do something they’re already quite willing to do … and to make that donation right now. (If they set the letter aside, planning to “do it later,” you’re lost that gift.)

“Make your donation … right now.” Action and urgency. That’s what it’s all about.

Devote more of your words, your real estate, your “visual cues” to action and urgency, and you’ll get more of those blessed predisposed supporters to make that gift. Emergencies. Matching gift challenges with deadlines. Anything with deadlines … anything that adds to the urgency … will lift response.

Where do you put all these calls to take action? … this urgency? All over the place! As explained in our #1 Secret!

The “resistor” fundraising acquisition package

Dan — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:18:25 +0000

Many/most organizations keep going back to the same lists for acquisition over and again. They’re good lists. They keep performing well. But you can speculate that thousands of people have become numb to your control acquisition mail package. At least to some degree, they recognize it when it arrives and say “no thanks … already decided on this one.”

Remailed often, they have become are “resisters” to your acquisition control.

One solution proven by multi-million-donor programs: Develop a “resistor acquisition package” — something really cheap in relatively small quantities and test into your most-used lists.

You don’t need to get as good a response as the control. (You don’t need to beat the control in response.) You just want to find out if there is a package that so cheap that it about the same cost of acquisition as the control.

With this, the overall prospect list can become more productive over time. In big programs, this pays off nicely with a tiny incremental increase in value. With small programs, you might have a cost-effective way to squeeze a few dozen new donors out of your best rental list.

Too many fundraising emails? Part III.

Dan — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:15:26 +0000

As noted in the last post, some organizations have been increasing frequency of emails around deadline until the number of “unsubscribes” was so high it offset projected revenue increase.

In a related learning from mail: The more powerful your appeal, the greater the negative reaction.

The Obama campaign included a nugget on this topic on one of their extremely helpful reports, this one called “Surprises fro Obama’s New Media Staff”:

“Best performing appeals often had the highest unsubscribe rates. Turns out, evoking passion in supporters worked both ways, but ultimately the campaign decided the positive fundraising results were worth the increased unsubscribes. Even when considering retention, the conversion stats outweighed the downside of losing people.”

This is further proof that learnings from mail fundraising are valid in the electronic arena.

Time and again I’ve seen the most over-the-top successful mail appeals generate a spike in white mail complaining about the letter, or the topic, or just complaining generally. When donations really spike, so does negative reaction.

A classic example, the National Rifle Association’s famous “Jack-booted thugs” appeal sent in 1995. The letter was pure LaPierre, claiming that the AFT and other government agencies were ready and able to invade your home. Former President George HW Bush resigned his membership. I heard list-rental rumors that almost a million mainstream NRAers also dropped membership. Whatever the number, they took a big hit.

But for all the negative furor, this was reputedly their most successful appeal in years, maybe ever.

Did it raise enough to offset the “mail unsubscribe” revenue loss? Maybe not. But it galvanized the resolve and spurred the giving of the hard-core gun rights folks — those who buy LaPierre’s rhetoric — and the organization has more than bounced back in subsequent years.

This is a high-profile example. I’ve seen many, many others in a variety of organizations. Evoking passion in supporters worked both ways. You lose some, yet you may well gain a lot more in donor dedication and generosity.

The real danger? When your organization (really, your board) has a dramatic reaction to the negatives, without adequately appreciating the related benefit of increased revenue. If someone forces you to weaken your message, you cut down on complaints. And income.

Too many fundraising emails? Part II.

Dan — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:21:52 +0000

If you’re concerned about “peppering” their donors with emails, look first at the nature of your electronic communications.

If you mailed me a brochure every few days, I’d quickly stop opening your envelopes.

When you mail me a personal note, short, with something concrete to say, I’ll at least look at quite a few more.

And if you can create increasing time urgency around a particular message, you have a far better chance of my reading, recognizing the reason for urgency — and responding.

Personal letters are far, far more effective than brochures. That doesn’t change in electronic media.

The Obama campaign did a wonderful demonstration of this, and they’ve been kind enough to share.

If you haven’t read a summary of this, do so now. Really. Right now. I’ll wait.

If you were on the receiving end of Obama campaign emails, you know how often they hit your inbox. Often. Sometimes twice a day.

So why was this frequency acceptable to donors? Why did they work?

They were brief. I could make a read decision in a nanosecond.

And they were personal. Look at the subject lines that worked best: “Hey” ‘Wow.”

These are not mission-based. They don’t tell you anything about what’s inside.

They look like something a friend sent.

Even “Some scary numbers” and “Do this for Michelle” hit the reader as personal communications.

In the context of the last happydonors post: They had a real deadline, which they effectively leveraged throughout the email campaign.

Sure, I’ll bet they got a lot of “unsubscribes.” But they also took in millions.

So, before deciding on email frequency, consider: Are you sending brochures? … or are you being appropriately urgent and personal?

Too many fundraising emails? Part I.

Dan — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:07:16 +0000

Every direct mail fundraising program generates its share of complaints, usually scrawled notes sent in your reply envelopes complaining that “you send too much mail” and either “you’re wasting donor money” or simply “I don’t like it.”

These almost always correlate with the success of the mail. The more response and revenue, the more complaints.

What to do? Respect their wishes. Stop mailing these people if they ask. Or mail only once a year. You’ll be fine. (Oh, and spend the necessary time with your board explaining that these are NOT representative of your donor community.)

Email raises more possibility for engagement, revenue … and trouble. Not free, but no print or postage. Why not send more … and more and more?

Some organizations have been testing the limits of email frequency during their electronic end-of-calendar-year fundraising campaigns.

Midnight, December 31 is a real deadline, which is an unusual marketing advantage in our business. Donors must send by that marker to deduct this donation on their itemized tax returns.

And emailing right into the teeth of that deadline works like crazy. I’ve seen programs as much as double donations in an end-of-year campaign by sending that one more email on December 31.

So why not make the most of it. Email two weeks before the deadline, again one week before, a few days before, a day before, then “deadline: midnight tonight”?

Try frequent emails if you dare, and you’ll find out how effective this can be (very!) and how dangerous (mileage may vary).

The groups that have been testing intensive email campaigns have a metric: “Unsubscribes.”

Unsubscribing to email is identical to that nasty “stop mailing” note in a reply envelope. Our problem though, is that it’s awfully easy to unsubscribe. And you must respect unsubscribes under the law!

Nonetheless, some courageous groups have tested, pushing for a fine line:

The additional revenue from frequent emails more than offsets the anticipated revenue loss from unsubscribes.

In a large program, you can project the average lifetime value of a donor. So you can monetize the loss of “unsubscribes.”

On the other side, you have the immediate increased revenue resulting from the email campaign. Plus you can extrapolate some increased value of each responding donor, especially if this is their critical second or renewal contribution.

The organizations doing these tests have huge files, large enough that the loss of a few dozen donors to unsubscription does not hurt the bottom line. Large quantities mean more to gain and less to lose from testing creative strategies like this.

That said, what can smaller organizations learn from this?

Deadline fundraising communications work. Really. So …

If you’re not sending”Day of Deadline” emails, you can do so with little to no risk. (Exceptions: You might not want to send them to your board or donors you have lunch with — people who you know might be sensitive to marketing techniques.)

BUT … don’t go out with a five-contact array of emails, especially if your audience is not used to getting many emails from you right now.

NOTE: This is effective any time you have a real deadline: End of calendar year tax deadline … Matching gift deadline … event marketing … any time there is some real-world negative consequence to not donating by a certain date.

Fundraising’s neglected “Thank You” opportunity

Dan — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:50:34 +0000

Every good fundraising book, workshop and blog will tell you how important it is to thank your donors. Quickly. And often.

Yet almost every organization neglects one compelling point of “Thank You” … at the beginning of each appeal to donors.

Fundraising appeals are too often just like acquisition communications. They open with …

“Problem. Problem. Won’t you help us solve this problem?” Or …

“We did a great thing. We did another great thing. Please help us do the next great thing.”

Both of these wholly ignore my relationship with the organization and its mission. How about ..

“You helped us solve this problem. Thanks! Won’t you please help us solve the next?” Or …

“You helped us do this great thing. Thanks! Won’t you please help us do this next great thing?”

A reasonably current donor is usually treated like a prospect. If I’m acknowledged, it’s later in the letter. Great, if I read that far. Why not affirm my relationship and build on it from the get-go.

Common reasons this doesn’t happen:

1) You’re using the same letter for donors and prospects. In which case, donors are never acknowledged. If so, how about a significant segmentation of donors vs. prospects. You really have different messaging if you’re talking to an ongoing supporter vs someone who’s like-minded (based on the list) but not given to YOU. In one, you’re reinforcing, in the other you really need to distinguish your handling of the mission against all the other wildlife/disease/whatever other list sources you may be using.

2) You’re mailing to everyone who’s contributed within the last two to ten years. And you’re uncomfortable talking to long-expired donors in such a chummy way. If so, get over it. Thanking people who have given is an “assumptive sell” … affirming their self-perception as supporters no matter how long ago they may have actually donated.

What’s the risk? “These people are STILL grateful! … What’s wrong with them?” Not too bad. Especially considering the upside of treating donors as donors and building on an existing relationship.

3) You want to hook people with a story in the letter opening. Fair enough. But the relationship is a good hook and doesn’t use up all that much space in the opening. You also have other “first read” options in a letter: an overline/Johnson Box, a block-indented paragraph early in the letter, the start of the P.S. Consider.

4) You don’t want people to mistake this letter for an acknowledgement. Good thought, but this letter need not start of with the words “Thank You” to quickly work in that sentiment.

Sure, keep acknowledgements distinct from appeals. Continue/start to message donors differently than prospects. But look for ways to take advantage of this most neglected opportunity to leverage your relationship with donors.

Copywriting quote of the day

Dan — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:47:47 +0000

“We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.”

–Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), c. 35-100 CE

The #1 Secret to Writing Fundraising Letters that Maximize Results

Dan — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:49:00 +0000

I’ve beaten a fair number of fundraising controls over the years, but only recently did I stop to compare my overall approach to that taken by most copywriters. Here it is:

Most writers assume that readers will start at the opening of a letter and read through to the end.

Pretty much all clients have this expectation. They review a letter by starting at the opening and reading to the end. Pretty much all reviewers look for some logical progression of ideas. First this, then that, and therefore the other thing. The crisis / case for giving, how your donation will help us fulfill our mission, now make a gift.

My assumption: Readers will pick up the four page letter, look at their name in the salutation, flip over to the P.S., then shuffle the letter around in their hands, maybe start reading here, maybe start reading someplace else, jump around a bit, and then, after this ragged scanning, MAYBE start reading at the beginning.

Chances are pretty good that they will have made a giving decision before they start at the top. They will certainly know what’s being asked of them. If they read from the beginning, it’s to gain some intellectual rationale for the irrational decision to give away their hard-earning money.

Some clients balk at this because it usually means a half dozen requests for money throughout the letter.

Content is repetitive. Key case-for-giving points are made again and again.

And it can LOOK CRAZY! … with lots of ellipses, block indents, bold-face type, underscoring and even ALL CAPS.

The purpose of all these visual clues, of course, is to cue readers to start RIGHT THERE if something looks the least bit interesting.

Sure, there’s progression of ideas. On a good day, the emotion of the letter builds over the pages. But nonetheless, the letter is always structured to sell readership throughout the letter, no matter where the reader’s eyes may land.

So it takes more than looking crazy. But repetition and a crazy look are good signs you’re on the right path.

Zen and fundraising response metrics

Dan — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 18:14:12 +0000

British philosopher Alan Watts is most know this side of the pond for his books on Zen Buddhism. One Watts stand-out that has value for fundraisers beyond mystical matters is Wisdom of Insecurity, from which I quote …

“If you want to study a river you don’t take out a bucketful of water and stare at it on the shore. A river is not its water, and by taking the water out of the river, you lose the essential quality of river, which is its motion, its activity, its flow.”

The point? For all we rely on response metrics when making fundraising decisions, we must retain some sensitivity for the context of each appeal and remain open to the long-term benefits of donor-focused and even mission-specific communications.

No communication can be read out of context. Everything is affected by what led up to it. And everything affects what follows. I argue that the effect means that you CAN NOT wholly trust the 95% reliability numbers …

… especially when you can not or do not really TEST echo effects in subsequent appeals.

Not many organizations have the volume or budget or patience to measure the secondary effects of appeals. But they can be significant enough to offset dollar loss on the initial effort.

We (almost) all accept the value of acknowledgements. Thank Yous never break even, but we act on the assumption that they support lifetime value.

Newsletters don’t usually break even. Some organizations use them for non-monetized “good will.” Some maybe for accounting rationales, so mailing expenses are better spread over “educational” vs. “fundraising.” But they can and do have an effect.

What about a no-ask holiday card? I don’t receive many of these, but have seen them worked with a few organizations that had the quantity to split test and read the subsequent lift in giving … which was plenty significant enough to offset the holiday card mailing.

No-ask holiday phone call? Yes, when one organization with a list in the millions tested a no-ask “Thanks for your support and happy holidays” call, they got a big enough lift in the following quarter to demonstrate the value.

That phone call fell out of the program as the organization changed agencies and lost the lore. I can’t know if it would still work for that group or will work for others. Very, very few have the quantity to test this.

But it did and can. And those newsletter can and probably do lift response to subsequent mail appeals.

Special cultivation efforts can and do lift response and average gift. The more personal the better. A hand-written note in the holiday card. A hand-written Thank You. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The metrics you use re essential. But please don’t focus on “event” response — seeing the bucket while missing opportunities downstream.

(Uh, oh. This post written without thinking about “The Zen of Fundraising” … a book worth your time.)

A/B testing in fundraising and beyond

Dan — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:46:05 +0000

I hadn’t realized how much A/B testing was being done online by ALL KINDS of organizations and enterprises until seeing this article in a recent Wired Magazine. Read it. Won’t take long.

You probably can’t do this kind of testing yourself. Not enough tech resources. Plus most organizations have lists too small to do A/B testing that generates statistically significant results … a big reason I started this blog, hoping the share tests done by big orgs with small.

The Wired article discusses web organizations that are driven by A/B testing in effective — and sometime radical — ways. When you DO have the resources, you can put up parallel web pages and deliver them randomly to users, and read the results instantly. A lot quick than mail programs, for sure.

Fundraising, for the ’08 Obama campaign and others, can fine-tune aspects of their sites to get more email addresses or donations. Consumer outfits can boost sales. Google used A/B to shape their search mechanisms and they way they deliver results to users.

A couple of lessons that all fundraising organizations should learn about testing:

– The risk is making only tiny improvements. If you’re investing in testing, don’t fine-tune when you can transform.

– Data makes the call. The statistical winner wins. Not the head of the organization. The Wired article notes that “A/B tends to shift the whole operating philosophy — even the power structure — of companies that adopt it.” Decisions start being made based on what works. Not what you like.

One theme throughout: Testing proves the truth of the unexpected. What works is not what you expect to work.

Why does some design or technique or copy approach outperform others?

Doesn’t matter. Just be glad you know what works and use it.