Best Direct Mail Fundraising Campaign

Howard Lake | 8 May 2007 | Blogs

For the campaign that demonstrates the best use of direct mail in fundraising. The application can be for new or current donors. Broadly, it should show who the campaign was aimed at, what it intended to communicate and how effectively it did so.
Barnardo’s Legacy Acquisition Mailing 2007

Legacy income accounts for over half of all Barnardo’s voluntary income and the main objective of this campaign was to produce an innovative, inspiring and results-driven mailing to increase potential income in this core funding stream. It aimed to target cold prospects/new markets; to identify any existing pledgers who had not yet declared their gift; to reactivate enquirers to motivate them to make a pledge; to promote clear and consistent values to the general public so that Barnardo’s becomes the charity of choice when people are considering legacies.
The mailing was sent to warm contacts from the database and to a selection of cold contacts from two externally sourced data lists. The team worked with TW Cat to create two separate ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ mailing packs which incorporated three different creative elements and a personally tailored letter, taking account of whether the recipient was a regular donor or a previous supporter, for example. Direct mail was considered to be the most appropriate method as it could convey the vital nature of legacy fundraising with an informative and subtle approach.
The campaign had a target of 150 new pledgers and 100 enquirers. Address segmentation across packs highlighted an example of Barnardo’s work in the recipient’s area. Longer letters were sent to ‘cold’ recipients with shorter, tailored letters to warm lists.
A total of 344 pecuniary pledges were made as well as 130 residuary pledges, which equates to a total future income of over £9.5m. The legacy enquirer segments of the warm database had a 40 per cent response with active cash givers on 30 per cent and high value individuals at 29.7 per cent. Only 12 enquirers were generated, indicated that the communication encouraged people to act rather than simply raise interest and awareness.
Royal United Hospital, Bath – Forever Friends Appeal

This campaign needed to secure new and additional support to buy a second CT scanner for the hospital. It aimed to involve the radiology department and its scanner patients and to progress the campaign to the point that it could be ‘closed out’ with a final appeal to five or six key individual donors.
A mailing list of 19,150 patients who had received recent scans was researched and a mail pack assembled with the help of eight volunteers. Approval had to be sought for the mailing and direct mail was deemed to be the only effective method of contacting the number of patients in question. As the hospital had never undertaken an appeal of this type before, it was difficult to plan the RoI. It had a ‘motivational’ target of £100,000, but felt that £50,000 might be a more realistic amount. In the event £154,400 was raised through 1,700 donors – almost all new – with funds still coming in. More than half of these donors have said they are willing to be kept informed or approached again regarding future RUH funding needs. The campaign was ‘trailed’ in the local regional press prior to the actual mailing that led to additional promotional/PR advantages.
RSPCA April 2006 cash appeal

The RSPCA’s primary campaign objective was to use the generation of campaign pledges from donors to raise £463,121 with a secondary objective of testing a donor-get-donor approach. The mailing was sent to the majority of the RSPCA’s database (403,834 people) and direct mail was the most cost-effective way to communicate with this number. It was also thought to be the best way to test audience-specific tailored creative approaches to the RSPCA’s two very different supporter types: older people who tend to give cash gifts; and younger people who tend to give by direct debit.
The mailing was tied in with the Animal Welfare Bill and the younger audience were asked to sign up animal-loving friends as well as making a donation, but older donors were not asked to do this. The creative was completely different for each of the groups.
The campaign was one of the charity’s best-ever supporter appeals, resulting in a 14.9 per cent response rate against a target of 9.7 per cent, and generating almost 76 per cent more income (£814,230) than targeted. The donor-get-donor approach recruited an additional 1,831 donors, with a further 5,664 prospects at no additional costs to the charity.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.