Best use of direct mail

Howard Lake | 24 May 2013 | Blogs

For the campaign that demonstrates the best use of direct mail in fundraising.

The shortlisted entries are:

• Emms International
• Unicef UK
• Wateraid

Emms International

The aim of this campaign was to raise £15,000 to rebuild a run-down hospital in Gujurat, India, with expenditure of £4,880. Direct mail has been the traditional form of communication for Emms with no history of email or telephone campaigns. As well as the DM appeal, there was an additional budget for a newsletter and prayer diary, which was scheduled to make a loss of £5,300.

The decision was taken that this special appeal should combine the budgets for both publications, and that the appeal would replace the newsletter. So the combined target for the two was £18,700 with expenditure of £13,800. The database was segmented into large gift donors and standard donors and the packs designed accordingly. The pack was designed more as a report than an appeal, and the rationale for this was based on good donor insight.

Almost every aspect of the appeal was ground breaking for Emms, but it worked so well that the actual income was £77,438.58 and the expenditure just £5,649.

UNICEF UK

UNICEF’s Christmas Appeal to warm doors is one of the biggest appeals in its fundraising calendar. The message this year was clear, that on Christmas Day 4,000 children would die of vaccine-preventable diseases, and vaccines are cheap, meaning that it doesn’t take a big donation to be able to make a difference.

Direct mail has proved in the past to be the most successful route to generate cash responses from this warm audience. Total income target was £508,587 from four different segments, which were then broken down further.

One of UNICEF’s high profile supporters, Ewan McGregor was recruited to tell the story of travelling with UNICEF staff and vaccines deep into the jungle in the Republic of Congo to deliver them. In addition to the leaflet, the pack included a sticker that supporters could complete and return with their gift. Packs also included the UNICEF pocket diary.

The appeal exceeded all targets and raised £878,121, and nearly 10,000 stickers were returned.

WaterAid

The High Value summer appeal used to the pound-for-pound match funding proposition developed for WaterAid’s Big Dig campaign to ask high value supporters to donate to the Rural Programme Work in Malawi.

As a result of DFID’s Aid Match scheme, the UK Government agreed to match pound for pound all income received to the appeal between 18 June and 18 September 2012.

The secondary objective was to show supporters access to real time content from the project in Malawi featured in the pack.

The pack was produced in-house. WaterAid knows that high value supporters respond better to its work when they can read and digest detailed information about the project they are giving to. This works very well within DM formats. It was forecast to bring in £64,000, but eventually reached £173,000 and response rate was 133% over target.

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.