Fundraisers wake-up call! Catch the email bus…

August 20th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

According to my inbox and yours too (if I may hazard a guess), many fundraisers are slow on the email marketing bus. The percentage of direct mail we receive from fundraisers far outweighs the percentage of emails we receive. When you consider the world of fundraising - especially the need to be accountable to donors, to spend money wisely, etc - I just don’t get the rationale here.

Let me go a step further and share my resentment for fancy direct mail appeals. When I get these glossy, slick appeals, all I can think about is how much money they must have spent printing the darn thing! Then to add to my angst, many fundraisers even throw in address labels, greeting cards, you name it, they’ve tried it! Again this costs money; and it’s money that should be directed towards the cause!! Sure the little goodies add an element of guilt, but I’ve been hit so many times that I’ve become desensitized and my guilt is very short-lived…almost non-existent. And even if I was thinking about donating, I don’t want to now because I know you’ll be using up my donation on dumb direct mails that include uninvited guilt gifts! No thank you.

So. Why don’t more fundraisers embrace email? Could it be they’re looking at old reports from 70’s? Are they afraid that their aging donors don’t go online? Who knows, but fundraisers really need to wake up. Stats show email works. Seniors are online. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Case in point. MarketingSherpa is sharing a really good case study (hurry it’s only online till Aug 22) that highlights how one fundraising organization pitted a series of emails against their usual direct mail package and tripled the number of donors and walkers for their annual fundraiser in the fight against breast cancer. Using email, they signed up three times as many participants and increased ROI 30%! View it online at:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30094

Here’s another really compelling argument to use email in fundraising. Consider the reality of websites and the drive for online donations. Since email can be one click away, doesn’t it make sense to use email as the driver?

So if you’re a fundraiser, don’t trash your direct mail strategies, just get smarter. Think about redirecting budget into the ever powerful world of the web! Layering email into the mix will have a much greater impact than those darn address labels. And you might even get my donation!

Posted in Email marketing |

One Response

Chad White Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Non-profits are definitely slow to catch on to email and even when they implement it’s not that great. The EEC is working with the Women’s Bean Project as its charity email project of the year. They have no email program currently, so we’re building it from scratch. Part of my contribution is recon on what similar organizations are doing with their email. So far it’s really disappointing. The ones that put out email newsletters are slow to send after sign up and often don’t send welcome emails. Right now I’ve got very little to show for all my recon. I’m just praying they send at least one email over the next month.