happy donors

Digging through the archives recently, I came across a good article by Jerry Huntsinger, the self-proclaimed “Dean of Direct Mail Fundraising.”

In “You’ll Have to Excuse Me, I Got Ds in Grammar” Jerry offers many useful tips.  For now, I’d like to address #5:  Be careful with periods.

Jerry says “A period brings a thought to an end, and that’s what you want to avoid, unless you want to merge into a new thought.   Notice I use the word ‘merge’.  You must always keep your letter moving.”

True all that.  But I’ll take this counsel a step further.

Outside the USA, a period is often called a “full stop.”   And that’s they risk I see in periods in many positions.

On a carrier teaser, I’d NEVER end with a period.  

The “full stop” essentially tells the recipient to STOP READING.   This is not the visual cue we want to deliver!

In a letter overline, let’s not tell our reader to come to a “full stop.” 

If memory serves (and it doesn’t always) David Ogilvie preached avoiding periods in space ads.  He advocated a single line of copy and a huge graphic image.  But when the line ends in a period, the reader is NOT encouraged to continue.

The “full stop” risk is why God gave us ellipses … which Huntisinger mentions in #10 in the aforementioned article.

An ellipsis tells the reader that something more is coming.  Our species seeks closure.  An ellipsis leaves us hanging … lacking closure … until we read on to find out how this ends.

So, I always end carrier teasers with an ellipsis.

Ditto overlines (AKA Johnson boxes).

And, like Jerry Huntsinger, I often end the opening paragraph of a letter with an ellipsis …

… buying that next ounce of readership that pulls the donor along to the next engaging thought.

At least five years ago, the Association of Fundraising Professionals reported the following generalizations based on testing by “more than 35″ national fundraising direct mail programs:

– Advocacy groups are usually better off not using premiums.
– Most nonadvocacy charities are better off using premiums either for their entire program, or as an additional program and add-on to their straight letter program (i.e., solicitations that don’t include a premium).
– Straight letter donors do not always have a higher long-term value than premium donors.
– Premium donors are nearly always easier to find (i.e. higher prospecting response rates).
– Nonpremium donors usually have a higher average gift.
– Nonpremium mailings nearly always cost less.
– Return on investment for premium donors can often be higher than return on investment for nonpremium donors, even if the long-term value for the premium donors is lower. This is because so many more premium donors respond to the mailings.
– There are more charity donor names in lists built upon premiums than straight letter.
– Most premium donors respond better to premium letters than to straight letters

The above was drawn from the 2005 AFP Best Practices in Direct Mail Fundraising, which I can no longer find on an AFP site but are listed here.

Happydonors comments: These are overall supported by the reports in the last post.

The first generalization regarding “advocacy groups” is questionable simply because of the breadth of that category.   Environmental, wildlife protection, animal welfare are just a few types of missions that combine political action / advocacy with other activities.  And these are all categories where premiums have proven highly effective and test into long-term advantage.  (Which is not to ignore the many highly successful groups who don’t use premiums.  Greenpeace is one of many groups that generally rejects premiums as a matter of ethics.)   And if advocacy is more strictly limited to political action, testing since this AFP report has proven many exceptions.   The NRA uses premiums, as do other groups heavily engaged in political action.

The number might well be greater if more such groups TESTED premiums.

I’ve seen personalized address labels work in all kinds of mail.   The limiting factor with this simplest of premiums is mail quantity.   Not seen it tried for an election campaign, but why not?   When the Tea Partiers launch mail, I’d bet on appropriately decorated labels.

Direct marketing tells us what works, but not why.  A favorite example arises with the Courier typeface – a typewriter font that continues to win tests long after the typewriter’s common existence.

I had the pleasure of selling low-cost, high-payoff insurance in the 1980s.  Not a boring task at all because nothing mailed without several tests.  Unlike 90% of direct marketers I got to try a LOT of things, winning quite a few, lowing more, but always knowing when and by how much … but never why.  We early on established that Courier was the winning font.  Never failed.  And nonprofits evidently had similar test results since that’s all I saw on fundraising letters.

Moving into the 1990s, many shifted to the more bookish Times Roman, but those (few) who tested slid back to Courier.  In the 1990s I was privy to a number of clean tests of font only … against Times Roman, Palatino, and other handsome fonts.  Courier won every time with every audience.

Entering a New Century, I’d still never seen Courier lose.  Only once, in a test against Times Roman, we didn’t get a significant difference.  No winner.  The fundraising director sighed relief because she personally hated Courier.  But the ultimate test was just a couple of years ago:

In a font-only test with high-school students — who’d never used a typewritter, perhaps never seen a typewritten letter — Courier won again.

As long as we were testing, we tried Courier in eMail and … it won again.

Yes, a typewriter font won in an electronic medium to an audience who did not use typewriters.  The font of “personal correspondence” for these people was likely Arial, common in email … yet old Courier gave a significant list.

Testing tells you what works, but not why.  This one is indeed a puzzler.