Quotes From the DMFA Package of the Year Awards Luncheon

On Friday afternoon, I had the pleasure to attend the Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association’s Package of the Year Awards luncheon in New York City.

Each of the winners, which were announced earlier this summer, were honored, and four of the packages were broken down by the people who worked on them. Tom Gaffny, principal of Tom Gaffny Consulting, and Lauren Wilson, president of Wilson & Associates, kicked things off by discussing the winner of the Overall and Acquisition Package of the Year, Covenant House’s Book With Paint Can Letter and Dove Insert. Gaffny and Wilson were followed by amfAR’s Valerie Vierengel, who broke down her organization’s winning campaign in the Renewal category; Andrea O’Brien, manager of the ASPCA’s Founder’s Society, who discussed the ASPCA’s renewal midlevel winner; and M+R Strategic Services Senior Vice President Steve Daigneault, who broke down the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s E-mail winner.

In upcoming editions of the FundRaising Success e-mail newsletter, Today in Fundraising, we will break down some of these winning campaigns. In the meantime, here a few key quotes from the luncheon presenters:

• “Write letters about people so they can see a scene as it’s unfolding.” —Tom Gaffny
• “[Covenant House founder] Father Bruce Ritter decided to connect with emotions first and foremost and sell the cause later.” —Tom Gaffny
• “We tested every element of this package 50 times.” —Tom Gaffny
• “We always look at the back end and the front end.” —Lauren Wilson
• “Stories don’t typically work for us in fundraising. Our supporters are what we call the affected and effected people of AIDS/HIV. They want to know more about knew drugs and research. But we went for a story with this appeal anyway, and it worked!” —Valerie Vierengel
• “Sometimes subtle changes can make a difference from year to year.” —Andrea O’Brien
• “It gets harder and harder to beat the results from last year when you keep beating the results from the year before.” —Steve Daigneault
• “At end of year, landing page tests and other elements may not make as much of a difference as other times of the year because people are more inclined to give at year end.” —Steve Daigneault
• “We found that day of week doesn’t really matter of end of year.” —Steve Daigneault

Keep an eye out for more detailed breakdowns of the 2012 DMFA Package of the Year winners in Today in Fundraising.