Focus On: Premiums: Primed for Premiums

Kline admits that donors acquired without incentives tend to have greater long-term value, but in every premium-built file there are large pockets of donors who have demonstrated a predisposition to give beyond just a small-dollar impulse gift in exchange for a trinket.

“A well-run, premium-based acquisition [campaign] could get as much as 25 percent of the response in $25 gifts,” Kline says, commenting on the tendency of higher-dollar premium responders ($25 versus $10) to become committed givers. “If you could migrate a portion of those individuals over at an acceptable investment, then you will have a non-premium-based program really worth something.”

Surprisingly, the likelihood of locating a non-premium-based pro-specting file with more than a million names is scant. Cautions Kline, “Either you do a great job of extending the best premiums, effort after effort, or someone else will.”