January 2002
Get those e-mail addresses! Nick Allen
What Americans think of direct mail Mal Warwick
What's up online Dan Weeks
Ask Mal: More questions on Fundraising after September 11 Mal Warwick
Get those e-mail addresses!
by Nick Allen
IF THERE'S BEEN ANY hesitation in your organization about working aggressively to get the e-mail addresses of your current donors and other constituents-and investing in the Internet to broaden your donorbase online-the recent anthrax problems give you one more good reason.
While we don't know the long-term effect on direct mail and people's willingness to open it, more individuals are certainly going to be suspicious about their mail. Mail delivery times may also be delayed by closed post offices, more spot checks, and so forth. That means it's a perfect time to ask your donors-again-for their e-mail address.
Give them three reasons:
1. E-mail helps avoid any concerns about anthrax or other toxics.
2. E-mail enables you to get the news out quickly when something urgent or newsworthy is happening that donors will want to know about.
3. E-mail saves money-and that means more of a contribution goes to the nonprofit's work, not to production, printing, and postage!
Once you've got an e-mail address, it's Use It or Lose It. So add that name to your e-mail newsletter list, or start a newsletter if you haven't already. You can use a free service like Topica.com or YahooGroups. com, but beware that these free services sometimes insert text advertisements in your newsletter (to help defray the cost of the free service). An old friend of mine runs an organization for political women. The premiere issue of her e-newsletter included a YahooGroups advertisement at the top: "Lose 40 pounds by Christmas." She cancelled the newsletter in embarrassment!
To avoid ads, and get more features and flexibility, try Sparklist ($50 a month at sparklist.com) or Microsoft's Listbuilder ($149 a year or a monthly rate at listbuilder.com).
If you're publishing a print newsletter, or regularly sending out reports, this may also be the time to offer them online and gauge the response. Of course, I'm not suggesting you take donors who are giving regularly via mail and suddenly stop mailing them, sending them only e-mail. That would be extremely risky. I'm suggesting you offer them alternatives and slowly test the best mix of communication channels.
If you have an e-mail list, now's also a good time to do an online survey. Find out who your e-subscribers are and what they want from your organization. You can use easy tools at zoomerang.com or inetsurvey.com -small surveys are free, and you'll usually pay per response for larger surveys.
One of our clients recently surveyed about 9,000 e-subscribers and got a 12% response; total cost $350.
Let me know what works for you.
(Special thanks to Jackie Gallogly and Lynne Rolls for their article "E-mail's Opportunity to Shine" at www.clickz.com, a terrific marketing site.)
Nick Allen, president of donordigital.com, is editor, along with Mal Warwick and Ted Hart, of the all-new second edition of Fundraising on the Internet, just published by Jossey-Bass. Contact him at nick@donordigital.com, phone (415) 278-9444.
E-mail wanted!
Nick Allen wants to know about your organization's fundraising experiences online — for good or ill — and whether you're willing to allow him to write about them in his column. Get in touch with Nick at nick@donordigital.com, call (510) 647-2700, or check in on the Web at www.donordigital.com. Those of us involved in the emerging field of online fundraising are all learning the hard way. Let's learn from one another! Maybe that will make it a little easier for us all.
What Americans think of direct mail
by Mal Warwick
ACCORDING TO a nationwide survey, 49% of respondents cite direct mail as the most important way they receive information on nonprofit organizations to which they contribute. Other main sources of information derive from their church (43%), friends and relatives (37%), telemarketing (14%), a telethon (12%), the Internet (9%), and informercials (6%). Broken down by age, seniors aged 72 and over were most reliant on direct mail.
This is just one finding of the fascinating Vertis Customer Focus: 2001 Direct Marketing Survey. Conducted in April-May 2001 by Marshall Marketing for Webcraft, the direct marketing service of Vertis (Baltimore MD), 2,000 American adults were polled about their direct mail attitudes and behaviors.
The survey also found that charity/fundraising was the number one type of direct mail read by respondents, with 55% saying they read nonprofit appeals. After that came entertainment direct mail (50%), subscriptions (42%), book/music clubs (38%), financial (36%), and automotive (35%).
Among nonprofit donors, those who contributed to animal causes and the environment were the most likely to read fundraising direct mail (72%), followed closely by contributors to political and homeless groups (both at 69%) and education donors (68%).
Here are some other key findings:
* Eight-seven percent of all adults had contributed to a charity in the past 12 months. (Keep in mind, this survey was conducted prior to the September 11th attacks.) Not surprisingly, this was directly related to income level-with, for example, 97% of those earning $50,000-75,000 having given versus 80% of those earning under $30,000.
* The majority of the population (54%) donated less than $250. Respondents aged 18-24 and those earning less than $30,000 were more likely to have donated less than $100. Conversely, Baby Boomers aged 37-55 and what were labeled "young/olds" (aged 56-71) were more likely to have donated over $500.
* Health organizations were the most popular recipients of respondent generosity. While 51% said they contributed, this number steadily increased with age (to 64% for seniors 72 and over). The same held true for religious nonprofits-48% overall, ranging from 34% for ages 18-24 to 61% for ages 72 plus. Other types of organizations and their response rates were: children's (41%), food/hunger (34%), homeless/shelters (32%), safety/disaster relief (28%), education (24%), animals/environment (22%), and political (11%).
* Of those who said they read fundraising direct mail, the most common method of response (39%) was to visit the charity's Web site (though not necessarily to make a gift). Thirty-two percent said they called an 800-number, while 27% replied via the mail.
* To charity direct mail readers, the most important reason for opening a direct mail package was personalization on the envelope and the timing of the mailing (both 62%). Other aspects that make a difference as to what mail is opened are: the package looks interesting (55%), it looks important (43%), it has a special offer (37%), it has a free gift or token (34%), and it has dated material (29%).
All in all, we can only speculate how these findings will change when this year's survey is conducted. How, for instance, will the torrent of disaster relief fundraising in the aftermath of September 11th affect direct mail attitudes and behavior? What difference has a weakened economy made? Has anthrax created long-term apprehension for readers of direct mail? Stay tuned!
What's up online
by Dan Weeks
If your computer has FLASH installed, you can travel to www.ozflyingdr.org and visit the Friends of the Australian Flying Doctor Service. (If your computer doesn't have FLASH, there's a link for you to download it - at your own risk, of course!)
The Friends of the Australian Flying Doctor Service supports the unique work of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. On their website, you can hitch a ride on one of their airplanes, as it hums its way across the Australian outback while you learn about their unique programs. For more than 73 years, the RFDS has provided 24-hour-a-day, 7 day-a-week, 365 day-a-year medical emergency and primary health care services to all children and adults in the world's largest waiting room - Outback Australia - an area equivalent to, and extending from, Hawaii to Boston and Miami to Seattle.
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