How Aging Changes The Way We Read Mail
Just last week, I read this tweet showed up in my newsfeed. Now admittedly, this is pretty old, but it did offer up a Groundhog Day moment for me. I was both transfixed and blown away by this image: Astigmatism is when the cornea is slightly curved rather than completely round.. With astigmatism, light focuses […]
Direct Mail In Canada: Where It’s Been, And Where It’s Going
All things COVID aside, there’s never been a better time to be Canadian – amiright? Nice, friendly people, free healthcare, gorgeous scenery, timbits and all-dressed chips. The bottom line is – Canada is awesome. And the charitable donors in this country? Even awesomer. But like so many things, fundraising benchmarks, data and research is mostly […]
A Smart Way Forward
The COVID-19 pandemic has sent a lot of charity leaders into a tailspin. In this unknown environment, many of us have felt that it’s somehow inappropriate to be ‘pushy’ about asking for money when so many are suffering. Wrong! Canadian donors have told us that they’re still generous – and that they still intend to […]
The Hectic Fall Season – Pandemic Style
For those of you that are savvy veterans of the direct mail fundraising game, you know that we are heading into the busiest and most important time of year, pandemic or not. For the vast majority of direct mail fundraisers, the September to December stretch is the biggest in terms of revenue coming in and […]
December 31 is 133 Days Away: How To Plan Your Year-End Direct Mail Campaign
It’s August. For some, that means sweltering days spent in the pool, in the lake, or in the air conditioning. But for fundraisers like us, it means it’s time to start planning our year-end appeals! Year-end, or ‘holiday’, appeals are often the most successful direct mail campaigns of the year for charities, big and small. […]
The Legacy Lift – Your Secret to Increasing Annual Revenues
Over the years, I’ve heard dozens of reasons why fundraisers don’t think that now is the right time to invest in their legacy giving program. Legacy & Planned Giving Inertia Often, the reason for not ramping up legacy gift fundraising is the fear that annual donors will stop giving once they’ve made their bequests. This […]
Direct Mail: Alive and Well!
A very long time ago when I worked in print, colleagues were concerned that the proliferation of computers would sound the death knell for the printing industry. It was assumed that books and manuals, for example, would all be saved to servers and floppy disks (ha! remember those?), and no one would want to buy […]
Choosing The Best Imagery For A Killer Direct Mail Campaign
How much thought goes into the creative of an appeal? In short … a lot! Above all, direct mail projects are centered around compelling stories that engage readers and show why a cause matters. This is what fuels donations. The imagery that’s used in a package is an important part of the process. Photographs are […]
When It Comes To Direct Mail – Does The Size Of Your Program Matter?
It’s officially summer vacation season, so if you haven’t yet gotten your hands on this year’s All-Canadian Direct Mail Benchmarks study, I’ll forgive you! (But it is a rather good poolside read, if you want to download it here.) We gathered data from 52 incredible organizations across the country, and uncovered Canadian-specific benchmarks for things […]
Search For New Donors The Smart Way
Where we’ve been In today’s direct mail marketplace, the fundraiser’s biggest struggle is the search for new donors. No matter how great our stewardship and retention efforts are, the fact remains that we need to replenish about a third of our direct response donor base annually if we want to avoid shrinking our donor pool. […]