Focus On: Premiums: Primed for Premiums

“The mailing just blew away anything we had done prior with this [box] format,” Hinton affirms. “We attribute a lot of success to the significance of the religious premium we’re offering, along with the spiritual message behind it.”

After the package’s impressive debut performance, Hinton tapped 18- to 36-month lapsed donors to FFP, as well as prospects represented on outside Catholic and religious lists. Currently the piece is garnering a 3.25 percent response rate, and Hinton reports donors renewing in droves.

“The donors who are giving to packages [offering] significant religious articles are renewing at a higher rate than other packages — by roughly 60 percent,” Hinton says, commenting on the newly acquired batch of multi-year givers.

One of Hinton’s chief concerns when he first joined the fundraising team at FFP was renewing premium-acquired donors.

“I don’t like guilt gifts,” Hinton asserts. “If you’re giving out of guilt, you’re not going to renew. These people aren’t giving out of guilt, they’re giving out of their own spiritual awareness.”

Through several tests, Hinton found no need to offer additional premiums in the renewal process, as donors to the original box mailing responded well to straight appeals focusing on FFP’s mission.

Iconic symbol lifts response
With 10 direct mail campaigns that target roughly one million prospects and donors annually, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation works hard to tie its premium offers back to the organizational mission — literally. Since the charity first launched a direct mail fundraising program in 1998, Komen has mailed a raft of No. 10-envelope appeals containing the most widely used front-end premium: name-and-address labels.

For its version, Komen employs the iconic pink ribbon to each label, and features important information about breast health on the reverse side of the sheet.

“All of our direct mail donors are premium-acquired,” Director of Development Paula Cain shares. “We do have donors who clearly indicate to us that they do not want premiums of any kind, and they end up receiving less mail because [Komen] doesn’t have that many non-premium, straight-appeal mailings in its program.”