Take a look at this article from TIME: Using Business Savvy to Help Good Causes. It makes the case for nonprofits to use direct mail as a sound business strategy. Worth the read.
In your direct mail, though, remember the cardinal rule: Don’t bore your reader! According to Pew’s research you have only seconds to grab your reader’s attention and to make your case. Don’t make the mistake I made early in my career: grammatical standards and language uses that were too precise and correct—and really boring. Hey, I wanted to look smart. That’s well and fine. But, don’t waste money on a fundraising letter to demonstrate it.
Use direct, colloquial language. Be interesting. Be compelling. Make your point early and use snippets of stories and quotes to bring it home.
(Earlier in my career I would have written my last sentence as follows: “Demonstrate your compelling and inspirational value proposition in the first or second paragraph to communicate your investment worth to your reader.” So, tell me, which sentence did you understand more quickly…)
The bottom line: connect to your reader. Hold a donor in your mind and write to that person. As Jennifer Aaker, professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business discovered: The trick is to be seen as both warm and competent. So, as a reader, don’t cool my affection with studied rhetoric. Tell me a great story.
Cheers,
Jim
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