Sorry, but It’s Not the Economy

Which is too bad, because most Next Big Things will never even be close to big. Some eventually will get big, but today, when you need it, the money is in the Old Big Things.

If you're serious about revenue, you will put most of your effort into direct mail, events, telemarketing, e-mail, planned giving and a few other areas that dependably work.

There's more than enough challenge in the old warhorses to keep you interested. And none of them is going to die during your or my career.

It's great to look ahead and keep up with new developments. But when you budget your time and energy, you should put most of both into things that 
work.

4. Your online and offline channels are not connected

Amazingly often, it goes like this: A donor gets a piece of direct mail and then goes online to learn more. Sometimes she stays online and gives. Other times she comes back and give through the 
mail.

Either way, she's crossing a boundary, and it's up to us to make that crossing easy for her.

Unfortunately, too many of us can't help her across because we can't even cross the boundary within our own organizations. The mail and website were created and exist in two different worlds …

• Direct mail, created in the rough-and-tumble real world of direct response, looks and feels one way. It's about straightforward solutions to serious problems. It's urgent, concrete, clear. With rough, simple, old-fashioned design.
• The website, created in the fantasy world of marketing, has almost nothing in common with it. It's all abstract brand promises. High-flown claims. Modern design.

The donor who moves from the mail to the Web might conclude she's in the wrong place, that the website she's found is not connected to the mail that's in her hand. Worse, she might decide the 
organization is duplicitous, saying one 
thing in one place and another thing in another place.