Marketing maven Seth Godin finished a recent post/rant with this comment:
“I love to hear about the next big thing, but I’m far more interested in what you’re doing with the old big thing.”
In fact, the title of the post was: Bring me stuff that’s dead, please.
Now, I had just read this account in Fundraising Success about some gee-whiz mobile campaigns, which had left me thinking … no one ever reports actual numbers in these ‘success’ stories. What you’re usually told is that the campaign ‘reached new target groups’ and ‘raised awareness’.
I’m not knocking experimentation and innovation (we know Roger loves mobile!), but reading the two pieces back-to-back was chastening.
Godin’s point made me wonder once again about the ‘dead stuff’ of fundraising … direct mail. At least from the column inches that seem to be devoted these days to online — and now, mobile — fundraising, one would think that direct mail has disappeared.
Maybe it’s just that innovation in direct mail has disappeared.
Is there anything left to be learned about direct mail. Anything that hasn’t been tested and re-tested?
Is the only news in direct mail these days totally idiosyncratic to a particular organization … as in, “we finally beat our prospecting control!” That’s great news, to be sure. But it’s just better messaging, offer, or creative, specific to that nonprofit or situation … not really an innovation in technique or approach.
So while The Agitator is always thrilled to hear news of a breakthrough mail package (and we’d probably write about yours if you furnished the numbers to back it up), what I really want to hear about is the ‘old big thing’ … Has anyone invented or discovered anything new in direct mail lately? Something that might improve performance for all direct mail fundraisers?
Who’s working on the ‘dead stuff’?
Tom
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We are still using this “dead” technique. Because so many of our clients’ current donors don’t have email addresses or don’t use the Internet regularly (it’s that life cycle thing), mail is still the best way to reach both current and potential donors.
But we are using more sophisticated modeling than we did even 2 years ago to better target house mailings. As for acquisition mail, we just keep doing it, looking for ways to reduce costs (it can be done) and still be effective. And it is still in the lists that we find the most success. Try as we might, often the control package that was established several years ago is still the best, even if no one “likes” it anymore.
We do watch mobile and web techniques though and integrate these techniques as we go along. Fundraising is like a river, always looking for a new channel.
I’m working on the dead stuff – it’s a great time to be in the mail!
As Helen mentioned, we’re now using much more sophisticated modeling thanks to companies like Flowtown and Rapleaf who allow us to segment and perform better than ever. Big data tools are now cheap and widely available, too, so you can crunch data better than ever.
Since so many people have abandoned the mail stream, each piece gets more attention and thanks to decreased cost of color, packages can now stand on their own.
Pair all that with cross media options and you can continue to be wherever your audience wants you to be.
Tom, if you email me your address I’ll get some innovation (and hard numbers) mailed your way.
My father co-owns a decades-old tax correction business. Part of his business model requires that he inform homeowners that his agency could lower their property taxes if they authorized his lawyers to make a good case that the home is overvalued.
So how does he go about informing these thousands of homeowners? Direct mail. No e-mail, phone calls, texts, Tweets, or Facebook messages. Just mail.
It’s not that my dad is old-fashioned. He has a degree in computer science, and has been using computers for his business since a kilobyte cost $5k and filled up an entire room. He’s more tech-savvy than I am, and I’m 23 years old. So why does he stick to direct mail?
Because it works. His handful of tried-and-true direct-mail methods deliver great results; the most important thing is the ability to write well, not technology. People like short, simple, colloquial style, a personalized message, and good news. Direct mail has been able to provide all that for… well, how old is the post office?