Two Common Direct-mail Production Issues

April 18, 2006

By Abny Santicola, editor, FundRaising Success Advisor

There are two perennial direct-mail production issues, according to Stephen Hitchcock, vice president for client services at Berkeley, Calif.-based full-service fundraising firm Mal Warwick Associates. They are:

1) The timeliness of mailings, i.e., trying to get them out as quickly as possible; and

2) Finding what Hitchcock calls that "sweet spot" of cost effectiveness.

In terms of the timeliness of mailings, Hitchcock says there's always a desire on the part of the direct-mail production staff and the printers to have a certain amount of lead time. Balancing this with the need for staff to agree on things like the text of the letter is where the challenge is. Hitchcock says timeliness also is a factor for some clients that deal with emerging issues or breaking news, whose challenge is to keep the production time gap as narrow as possible.

One way around this challenge is using laser personalization, which allows you to have form letters where you can insert a person's name in the salutation, have an "original" signature or input any other data your organization wants. The costs for laser personalization continue to decline, Hitchcock says, and production of laser-personalized direct mail is much faster.

Organizations can even use laser personalization to respond to urgent issues by having a generic outer envelope and reply envelope that can be printed ahead of time.

As for cost effectiveness, Hitchcock says, postage is the most significant variable in cost for mailings to an organization's current members or current donors. "The decision of when to use First Class postage and when to use nonprofit standard postage is a big one," he says. "It makes a big difference in the cost."

Another dilemma is whether to put a live stamp on the reply envelope. Hitchcock says probably the most effective way to influence response rate is to put a live stamp on a reply envelope, but when you do that you're talking about a 39 cent investment per mail piece. "In general, when you're mailing donors who give $25 or less, for most of them, it's very, very difficult to raise net revenue if you're mailing that out at First Class. Unless they're very, very responsive $25 donors. Conversely, if you're mailing donors who have given $100 or more, it's almost always worth investing in First Class postage and also investing in putting a live stamp on a reply envelope."