What Does Your Board Need to Know About Direct Mail?

And, according to an InfoTrends Research Group study, nearly 70 percent of people prefer direct mail to e-mail or phone-based marketing.

3. The high cost of doing nothing
One thing you can be sure of: If you don’t ask for anything, you won’t get anything!

Chart 3 displays what happened when a national human-services organization decided to “save money” by eliminating its acquisition program:

This organization was seeing a sharp decline in direct-mail revenues. Yet just as the numbers were emerging from a slump, the decision was made to cut acquisition.

The purple line shows that, yes, costs did plummet. However, as the green line proves, three full years after the acquisition cut, revenues still had not climbed to even their lowest previous level. (Source: 2006 Annual New York Nonprofit Conference)

This organization learned the same painful lesson so many others have: The only thing more expensive than prospecting is not prospecting.

4. What you can expect
Chart 4 shows a typical acquisition projection for a large Red Cross chapter:

If only half of new donors make a second gift of $25 within the fiscal year, you have more than recouped your initial investment.

The bottom line
The above information just scratches the surface of the intricate world of direct-mail fundraising. But I hope this will give you some nuts-and-bolts information to help illustrate the high value of a direct-mail program for an established organization. At the end of the day, it is an old cliché, but in this case, it’s really true: Direct mail doesn’t cost — it pays!

Willis Turner is a senior copywriter at Huntsinger & Jeffer Inc. in Richmond, Va.