Direct Mail answers for PR & Marketing Professionals, Nonprofits, and Small Business

Is Direct Mail Fundraising Still Pulling in the Lion's Share of Gifts?

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With all the noise about social media marketing and e-mail marketing, are you confused about how direct mail fundraising still fits into the mix?

Research published this year by nonprofit software giant, Blackbaud, shows that direct mail accounts for 79% of donation revenue for nonprofits. This answers the questions of "Is direct mail fundraising still relevant?" with a resounding "yes!"

So now that you've seen the numbers in support of direct mail fundraising, how do social media marketing and e-mail fit in?

How should nonprofits use e-mail and social media?

Technology news site, Mashable, examined the data from Blackbaud and came to the conclusion, that the most effective fundraising campaigns are coordinated, multi-channel efforts. That's right, synchronizing your traditional marketing and online marketing results in more profitable campaigns. In fact, according to Mashable, multi-channel fundraising campaigns result in three times better fundraising results-wow!

This means that instead of ransacking your direct mail fundraising budget and shifting it to social media or e-mail, you need to be sure to allocate funds to multiple channels. If direct mail marketing is responsible for 75% of your current fundraising, then you need to fund your direct mail appeals accordingly.

What steps should nonprofits take to increase their exposure online?

Successful social media marketing requires engagement. Engagement simply means interaction with your constituents, donors and volunteers. Engagement requires the substantial investments of one precious resource, and that resource is time.


It's easy to look at social media marketing and make an argument for how inexpensive it is compared to other forms of marketing, but this assumes that the required staff time has no value-which of course would be ridiculous.

You can't just sign up for a Twitter account and start a Facebook page for your nonprofit and expect people to flock there. You have to identify a team member, volunteer or paid consultant who can devote the time required to develop a presence, share relevant content, and interact.

This may sound daunting, but the good news is that another study published by Mashable shows that social media marketing is one of the few areas where smaller nonprofits can compete with the big boys. It's one area where your fundraising budget will not limit your success.

What's the best way for nonprofits to collect e-mail addresses?

E-mail marketing is viewed as another low-cost option for fundraising and marketing; however, many people forget that e-mail marketing is a permission-based form of communication.

Obtaining someone's permission to market to them via e-mail is not only the right way to go about it, but it's also mandated by the US Congress' Can Spam Act of 2003.

What about buying e-mail addresses?

I get asked on an almost daily basis by existing clients or blog visitors about purchasing e-mail addresses. I feel very strongly that purchasing e-mail addresses is the wrong way to go. A purchased e-mail address does not equal permission. Please take a look at my recent post How to Get More E-mail Addresses Without Being Labeled a Spammer for a more detailed look at this important topic.

So what's the key to get your marketing to work together?

The key to multi-channel marketing is to use the information that you already have about your supporters to fill in the missing pieces. If you have physical addresses, send a postcard asking supporters to sign up (give permission) to receive your e-mail communications. If you have e-mail addresses, invite your constituents to connect with your social media channels.

Send an e-mail campaign requesting supporters to share their physical mailing addresses. If you're worried about the logistics of this, you may want to consider using a PURL campaign. You can always hire me or another professional to manage the campaign for you. The data that you collect from existing donors is worth way more than any purchased list you could find.

Why go to all the trouble to set up multi-channel marketing?

Really, the key to improving your fundraising is to make it as easy as possible for your supporters to make a donation. The truth is that you don't get to decide how your donors want to interact with you, they do.

How donors choose to interact, may change from day to day. One day they may respond to direct mail, and the next day they may donate based on an e-mail solicitation. If you're reaching them across different channels, you are empowering your donors to support you using the channel that works best for them.

Going out of your way to make it easy for your donors, improves results and provides more money to support the important work that your organization is doing.

Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly e-newsletter yet or are you following my blog's rss feed?

Where has your organization seen success fundraising? Please share your comments below.

The Dynamic Duo: E-mail Marketing and Direct Mail Marketing

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Are you looking for more e-mail addresses for your marketing communication? I get contacted almost every day by people like you who want to purchase e-mail addresses.


The problem is that most people forget that e-mail marketing is a permission-based. Not only is getting permission the right way to use e-mail marketing, but the US Congress' Can Spam Act from 2003 mandates it. This means that it's almost never a good idea to purchase e-mail addresses to use for your e-mail marketing.

So what's another way to collect e-mail addresses?
Step 1: Create a sign up form. Prominently display your sign up form on every page of your blog or website. Make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for your e-mail marketing.

Here's an example of my sign up form. You'll also see a link prominently displayed in the top right-hand corner of my blog.

Step 2: Target the right people. Start with existing customers. Yes, you can use the physical addresses of your existing customers to get their e-mail addresses. I've launched many direct mail campaigns like this for my clients, and I can tell you that this is one of the most profitable ways to use direct mail marketing.

Since the people receiving the direct mail communication already know you-remember, these are your existing customers-they are very likely to pay attention and respond to your request to share their e-mail address.

How do I get people to sign up for my e-mail marketing campaigns? If you want to make your campaign even more successful, then offer subscribers a small incentive, reward or discount in exchange for their permission for you to market to them.

By the way, if you think for a minute that existing customers aren't worth investing your limited marketing dollars, then please take a look at my recent post, Your Marketing Blind Spot.

How do I prevent people from unsubscribing?
1) Find out what they are interested and talk about it. People are looking for solutions to their problems. If you share videos, blog entries, book reviews or any type of information that can solve problems for your customers, then they will pay attention to you and stay subscribed.

2) Offer them incentives. Coupons are the most common incentive, and this is a great way to keep people interested and engaged, but coupons and discounts are not the only way to keep people engaged. If you share information that helps to solve problems for customers and prospects, then you can keep some of the information private, and share it exclusively with people who sign up for your e-mail marketing.

How does this impact my budget? While it costs less to market to customers via e-mail, the "permission" thing gets in the way. So the reward for encouraging your customers to sign up for your e-mail marketing communications is that you're automatically stretching your budget by converting them to a less expensive platform.

What's the best way to communicate with my customers? Your customers are fickle, and you can't control that. Some days they may respond to an e-mail, others direct mail and on other days that may want to hear from you via social media.

In almost all cases, there is no single channel that will suffice for your marketing efforts.

How can I score my marketing efforts? If you're not marketing at all to your existing customers, then you earn an "F." If you are marketing using a single channel, then you are probably somewhere around a "C." Consistently marketing using two channels will earn you a grade of "B," and if you're using more than two channels, you've earned an "A."


If you think this grading system is silly, consider that the more successful you are at marketing to your existing customer, the more profitable you will be. The investments that you make marketing to existing customers result in additional business, a longer customer life cycle and referral business.

If you agree that this is really important stuff, but aren't quite sure how to get started, I hope that you'll please contact me. This is the type of stuff that I help my existing clients with every day. Let me help you realize the benefits of marketing to your existing clients.

Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly e-newsletter yet or are you following my blog's rss feed?

What do you see as the keys to marketing to your existing clients? Please share your comments below.

Are You Making This Common E-mail Marketing Mistake?

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You know how important it is to track the results of your marketing, right?  Tracking marketing is fundamental.  In fact, another way to think about tracking is more like listening.  Tracking how people interact with your marketing is really just another way to listen to what customers and prospects want from you.

As far as tracking goes, certain marketing vehicles make tracking easier than others.  When executed properly, e-mail marketing can offer amazing real-time tracking. 

Unfortunately, I've run into several friends who simply don't understand the fundamentals of e-mail marketing.  More specifically, over the course of the last week, I've had two clients push me to send e-blasts for them with PDF attachments instead of properly formatted e-newsletters.  Are you making this common e-mail marketing mistake? 

Among other problems, e-mail marketing sent with a PDF attachment makes tracking your campaign nearly impossible.  Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of your e-mail marketing.

Why is it a mistake to send mass e-mails with PDF attachments?
•    Blocked e-mails: Probably the biggest problem with a PDF attachment is that many recipients will never receive your e-mail.  Spam filters and default security settings will simply block e-mail with attachments that are sent to multiple e-mail addresses simultaneously.
•    Inefficient to send: Most e-mail platforms limit how many e-mails you can send at one time.  As a result with PDF attachments, there’s no efficient way to send out bulk e-mails.  Sending a PDF attachment involves a lot of copying and pasting, and it makes keeping track of who’s already gotten your e-mail cumbersome and difficult.
•    Compliance with the Can Spam Act: One of the fundamental requirements of Congress’s Can Spam Act of 2003 is that recipients of e-mail marketing have an efficient way to opt out/unsubscribe.  While all of the major e-mail marketing platforms offer a single click unsubscribe, e-mails sent with PDF attachments offer no efficient solution to this problem.

What are the benefits of using an e-mail marketing platform instead of a PDF attachment?
•    Analytics/Ability to track: Not only can you determine how many recipients opened your e-newsletter, but you can also determine which links were clicked.  This provides a fantastic snapshot of what your customers find interesting.
•    Update customer contact information: People change e-mail addresses all the time.  E-mail marketing platforms prevent you from losing them as subscribers by imbedding code that allows your subscribers to update new contact information with one click.
•    Text-only version: Many marketers fail to realize that most of the major e-mail providers default settings block all graphics; this includes major e-mail platforms like g-mail and Outlook.  By having a text-only companion version of your e-newsletter, you can be certain that even recipients with the highest levels of security in place will still be able to read your message.
•    Social share features: Almost all of the major e-mail marketing platforms offer integrated buttons or widgets that allow consumers of your marketing to share the content across the most popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter with one simple click.

Which e-newsletter platform is the best?  I've been sending business e-newsletters for the last 7 years, and I've tested several different e-mail marketing platforms.  MailChimp is my current vendor of choice, but I've also heard very good things about AWeber from my peers.  Each platform has its own quirks, and many offer free trials or free versions that you can use to evaluate which platform will work best for you.

Whichever platform you choose, it takes time and practice to get used to creating professional looking e-newsletters.  Start small and plan to send many test e-mails.  Always test all of your links to make sure that they work.  If you don't have the time to do this correctly, consider hiring a professional like me to help launch and manage your e-mail marketing campaigns. 

Are you looking for more e-mail addresses for your e-mail marketing?  If you're trying to corral more e-mail address for your marketing, please don't try to purchase an e-mail list.  Instead, take a look at my recent post, How to Get More E-mail Addresses Without Being Labeled a Spammer.

The proliferation of spam has put us in a place where there are no legitimate short cuts to capturing the e-mail addresses of prospects.  Some of the most successful campaigns that I've launched for clients have involved sending printed bulk mail marketing enticing existing customers to sign up for e-newsletters.  If you need help with this, I hope you'll please contact me.

Successful marketing involves interacting with your customers across multiple platforms, and e-mail marketing is still one of the key ways to reach customers.  Not only is e-mail marketing a powerful way to interact with your customers, but it’s also a fantastic way to access real-time feedback from them.

If you'd like to learn more about the topic of e-mail marketing, I highly recommend the book Sign Me Up.

Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly e-newsletter yet or are you following my blog's rss feed?

Please share some of your experiences e-mail marketing in the comments section below.

How to Get More E-mail Addresses Without Being Labeled a Spammer

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Without a doubt, e-mail marketing is one of the most cost-effective tools for marketing to existing customers and prospects.  The challenge that most businesses and nonprofits face, however is how to collect the e-mail addresses of these existing and potential customers/donors.  This post will share some practical and easy-to-execute tips for increasing the size of your e-mail marketing list.

I'm writing this post because I get inquiries from several people per week who want to purchase e-mail lists from me.  Although I do provide mailing lists that contain physical residential and business addresses, I do not sell e-mail addresses because I don't think it's good business practice.

The passage of the Can Spam Act in 2003 mandates that direct-mail marketers get permission before sending e-mail marketing communications.  Quite simply, sending mass e-mails to people blindly is against the law.  Marketers who disregard this policy are at risk of being labeled "spammers," and have the potential of being black-listed by the major Internet Service Providers, which means that their e-mail account could be completely shut down.

So instead of buying e-mail addresses, here are some more practical ways to acquire the e-mail addresses of customers and prospects:

Online Tips:  Probably the most basic way to capture e-mail addresses is to have a graphic or widget on the sidebar of your website or blog.  It's critical to make sure that you have this on every page.  Most of the major e-mail service providers have widgets that allow you to simply copy and paste the necessary code directly into your website or blog.  You'll see an example of one of these near the very top of the right-hand side bar of every page on my blog.

If you have a blog, I also found that I get even more conversions from including a link in the text of my blog post.  At the conclusion of every blog post, I include the following text "Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly e-newsletter yet?"  By including a sign up link right in the text, I'm able to capture people right in the act of reading one of my posts.

Off-line Tips: Did someone say direct mail?  Yes, that's right direct mail is a fantastic tool for motivating customers and prospects to sign up for your e-newsletter.  I recently launched a direct mail campaign for a client with the specific goal driving customers to sign up for their e-newsletter.  With a single mailing campaign we were able to get 18% of her existing customers to sign up for her e-newsletter.  This was not an elaborate mailing but just a simple, single-color postcard.

We purchased a specific URL for the mailing campaign that was short and required minimal typing-the simple URL did not contain any back slashes or strange characters.  Another tip to make it even easier to sign up would be to include a QR Code on the postcard so that users could simply scan the code and be delivered to the sign up page.

Other Tips: Keep your sign up form as simple as possible.  Many forms simply require subscribers to enter their e-mail address with no other information.  At most, you should ask for first name, last name and e-mail address.  By requiring more information than this during sign up, you risk people abandoning because they either don't want to take the time to fill out a lengthy form, or they don't feel comfortable having to provide that much information up front.  You can always go back later and attempt to capture more information with an optional follow up e-mail.  The bottom line is avoid making it too complicated for people to sign up.

A bonus tip is to offer an incentive of some sort for people who sign up for your e-newsletter; please note, this does not have to be anything elaborate.  By signing up, you can give them access to some premium content like a white paper or a recorded webinar.  As an alternative, if you have an e-commerce site you can offer them a one-time 10% discount, of give them a coupon code for a free widget with their first purchase.  Make sure that what you offer somehow relates to the content in your e-newsletter so that people don't sign up for the wrong reason and then just end up unsubscribing.

Don't make your customers and prospects jump through hoops if they want to sign up for your e-newsletter.  Take advantage of what you already have to entice your contacts to volunteer their e-mail addresses; this includes leveraging your website or blog, and using your customers’ physical addresses to make it as easy as possible to share their e-mail address.  By offering a simple incentive to sign up, you can greatly increase your odds of people taking action when they have the opportunity?

Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly e-newsletter yet or are you following my blog's rss feed?

Do you have ideas on how to get customers and prospects to share their e-mail addresses?  Please share them in the comments section below.