It IS Personal

 Nonprofit  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

Direct mailer writers always talk about making our mail ”personal”. For us that means lots of “I, you, we”, using a conversational tone, and, quite often, fudging the rules of grammar a bit.

But the other day, a couple of things happened that reminded me that there is another way to keep things personal — something it’s all too easy to forget in this day and age of social media connections and conducting business by e-mail.

First, I ran into an acquaintance who runs an arts organization. She was thrilled because her group had just been notified that they were the recipients of a big grant. I congratulated her, and she told me this story:

“You know, we thought for sure we were out of the running this year. The group giving the grant just announced they were eliminating arts funding! So when I got word, I immediately called them up to say ‘thank you’. The man in charge of granting the awards told me that he had gone against the new policy specifically for us because he remembered meeting our Executive Director and having a great conversation with her at an unrelated event. Personal connections really do count!”

Do they ever.

A similar thing happened to me a couple of months ago. A client I’d been working with for a couple of years went through some restructuring. They completely reevaluated all of their old contracts with an eye on reinventing their program from the ground up. I fully expected to lose the business.

But the Development Director called me up and asked that I stay on, one of the few contractors asked to do so. Now, I’m sure my strong work ethic and quality product played a part in that decision. But the tipping point?

I took the time while on a vacation in their city to stop by and meet the gang at their office.

This wasn’t actually a calculated move on my part. At the time, I had no idea that they were planning on restructuring. I just wanted to be able to put faces to the e-mail addresses and conference call voices. But those couple of hours out of my vacation paid off.

Those face-to-face connections are important — maybe even more so now that so many of us do business with people across the country…or across the globe. It might take a little extra time and effort, but the payoff could make it all worth it.

 Posted by Richelle at 1:06 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Angling for donors

 Nonprofit  Comments Off
Jul 182011
 

It's hard work reeling in donors. Don't leave the fishing to amateurs.

The other day, I overheard a development professional I know telling a potential client, “I like to let board members have input into all direct mail copy.”

My alarm bells went off, and I wanted to jump in and offer all sorts of unsolicited opinions about that. But instead, I decided I’d just save them for you.

Now, he went on to explain that he likes to involve board members so they have buy-in to the direct mail program — a sort of “We’re all in this together, folks!” idea. I am all for inclusion and board buy-in.

In fact, I believe wholeheartedly that everyone involved in your organization, from the board president to the once-a-month volunteer, should know what’s going on in the organization and be able to communicate that.

But.

A few years ago, I wrote a letter for an organization run by a very respected, very intelligent scientist. He was widely published in prominent scientific journals and national newspapers and magazines. He was a great writer, and he hated the letter I wrote for them. Ripped it to shreds. He deplored the overly emotional tone and the use of 2nd person point-of-view. He was adamant that his donors would see through such a hackneyed ask and leave the organization in droves.

Naturally, I was upset. I had worked extremely hard getting the complex technical details in the appeal right and melding those with the kind of impassioned, personal plea I know works in direct mail.

The development staff and I sat down and discussed how to proceed, and eventually, we convinced the executive director to test his approach vs. my approach. The results were definitive in my favor.

Now, this guy was a Ph.D. He had a couple of decades of experience in writing about his subject on me. But he didn’t — at that time — know direct mail at all.

Unless your board members — or other people you’re asking to read your direct mail copy — are or have been involved with direct mail before, it is likely that they’ll look at a good appeal letter and see all the same things my scientist client saw: hyperbole, simplified language, lots of “you”, too much bold and underlines — things that academic writers are trained to avoid like the plague.

There’s a reason hopeful anglers like to hire guides when they go on a big fishing expedition: they want an expert to show them where the fish are and what they’re biting on. Rather than tossing their lines out and seeing what happens, they’re taking the expert’s advice and adapting it to their equipment.

Your direct mail program needs that same care. If you take bits of advice from every angler on the river, you’re not going to catch as many donors as you want.

Buy-in is great. But educated buy-in is better. So make sure anyone reviewing your direct mail letters has a good Direct Mail 101 course — or at least read an article like this one from Fundraising Success — before they toss in their line. And happy fishing!

 Posted by Richelle at 10:59 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

The Passion Behind the Ask

 Nonprofit  Comments Off
Jul 112011
 

“Passionate people are the only advocates which always persuade. The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.”

~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

You are the best advocate for your organization.

Which means that everyone at the organization – from the receptionist, to the IT person, to the program staff, to the Executive Director – is a fundraiser.

Daunted? Don’t be.

I’ve been writing direct mail fundraising letters for fourteen years. And as I’ve talked to countless staff members, trying to gather the information needed to produce a blockbuster piece, there’s one question I’ve learned to ask first:

Why are YOU so passionate about this issue/problem/organization?

Because when you’re trying to raise support – whether it’s time, money or energy – for your organization, you’re talking to people. And people want to hear the good stuff before putting that all-important signature on the check.

They want to be moved. They want to feel they can make a difference. They want to connect with their tribe and feel they’re part of something greater than themselves.

And if you’re trying to get their money (or time, or referrals, or anything else), you’ve got to convince them that you can give them what they want. The best way I’ve found to do that is to convey your passion.

That’s one of the things I love about direct mail. It’s personal, it’s impassioned, and it conveys key things about your organization, its mission and its issues in a concise and friendly way. While asking for money!

But that ask starts with your passion. After all, a direct mail letter is a personal letter from one person at your organization to one donor. That one donor — multiplied by the thousands of letters you send out — needs to sense your excitement about the cause, your commitment to working on it. They need to feel that YOU are absolutely convinced that your organization is the best for the job.

When they can feel every ounce of your passion in that ask, that’s when they are most moved to give.

So, what do you love about your work? And why should it matter to the rest of us?

 Posted by Richelle at 10:15 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Benefits of Giving Up

 creativity  Comments Off
Jul 062011
 

Get a new perspective when you walk away from work.

Why yes, I did recently write quite a nice post about perseverance and finding that one-legged-biker inspiration to keep you going in dark and frustrating times. But today, I want to write about giving up.

We’re taught to never give up. A host of voices from our childhood, our adolescence, and right on up into adulthood all exhort us to keep climbing that mountain, keep reaching for those stars, don’t give up. You can do it.

But sometimes, giving up is good. Especially when you’re writing.

In most projects, there comes a point at which you can’t figure out what’s not working. You might know what’s wrong or you might not. But clearly, something needs to change.

You can spend hours beating your head against the keyboard, forcing word after word onto the page. Or, you can try these four “I give up!” techniques:

Take a Walk

There’s a reason this is a tried-and-true suggestion for dealing with writer’s block — or any other kind of block, for that matter. A ten minute walk around the block can clear your head and get blood flowing to those parts of your body that can go a little numb after hours and hours hunched over the screen of your laptop.

Try a Change of Scenery

Speaking of laptops, if you don’t have one, get one! Then you can take it on the road — coffee shop, bar, extra desk at your buddy’s office…giving yourself the gift of unfamiliar surroundings can boost creativity and help you solve problems that seemed insurmountable when you’re staring at your same old scene.

Bake Something

Or learn to knit or build a birdhouse or play the piano. Doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you funnel that creative energy into something totally different. Open new pathways, and you’ll be surprised where those new roads will take you in your writing.

Take a Nap

If it’s good enough for Einstein, it’s good enough for you! (Seriously, Google “famous nappers” — lots of powerful, creative people liked a good nap!) A ten minute power-nap can do wonders for recharging your mid-day batteries. Plus, I often find that while I’m sleeping, my brain keeps on working on those stubborn problems. And when I open my eyes, the solution is right in front of me.

Alright, I admit it. This post isn’t actually about giving up. At least not permanently. But it is about knowing when to walk away from a creative project and let it simmer for a while. Get some distance, find a new perspective, and enjoy the view for a while. Work will still be there when you get back.

 

 Posted by Richelle at 3:36 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Tip: Photos in Direct Mail

 Nonprofit, Tips and Tricks  Comments Off
Jul 052011
 

The other day, a client asked what I thought about using photos in direct mail. I sat down to shoot off a couple-sentence answer and ended up writing several paragraphs about my experience with photos — the good, the bad and the complicated.

The next day, I stumbled across this article from Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now, which could have saved me a lot of trouble if I’d found it earlier! I agree with his advice to test, test, test…but here are some other thoughts I shared with my client about photos.

The Good

When you find a photo that tells your story, use it. The story should be clear at a glance, or easily understood with minimal text. Color is best, but black and white or sepia can be effective for some photos. People and animals work better than things.

The Outer Envelope, the Letter and Inserts are the best places for photos. But if you’re going for an image on the envelope, it needs to be particularly strong. Remember, your number one goal with the outer envelope is to get it opened, so any photo you use has to be intriguing and compelling. And you need to follow up on that intrigue in your letter copy, or the people who open the envelope are going to feel cheated.

Offering a free gift? Include a photo of the gift. Inserts are great for this, and you see many organizations put the premium photo on the OE. But be careful that you’re not over-selling the premium to the detriment of the organization and your cause.

MercyCorps is one organization that uses photos well, as is NRDC — check them out.

The Bad

I have been involved in testing photos on OEs, letters, inserts and replies. Results were generally either even with no photos, or unimpressive, with a couple of exceptions like those noted above. It would be easy to assume that photos just don’t work, but the real story is this: BAD photos don’t work.

Photos of people standing around — even important people — are ineffective in direct mail. Got a photo of your executive director shaking hands with President Obama? Great! But please don’t put it in your direct mail. Landscapes often make beautiful photos, but they’re a difficult sell in direct mail…unless they tell that compelling story.

And even the best photos are no good if you have to run them so small that it’s hard to tell what’s in them.

Bottom line: if your photo isn’t going to entice a donor to give, then you’re better off without it.

The Complicated

If you’re running the photo in color, that will mean additional printing costs. Be sure to check to see if you need permission to reprint it, and what kind of attribution you need to supply. Using more photos means less room for copy, so if you have a wordy copywriter or an organizational tendency to include a lot of information in your letters, you’ll have to remember to cut.

I really do like using photos in direct mail. When done well, they can boost response and give your donors a great sense of what your organization is all about. But it’s important to choose the right photo, put it in the right place, and test, test, test!

 

 Posted by Richelle at 9:54 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,