Integrated fundraising campaign with email and postal mail

Jennifer Williams 2

We are actively planning our Spring fundraising appeal.  What are your experiences and best practices regarding integrating our first online appeal with our standard letter and post card.  We are concerned about timing and also quantity of communication.  How much is too much?  Too little?  Does timing change the thinking about quantity?

thanks all,

Jennifer Williams, Maryland Family Network

Rachael Ahrens

There are many good ways to integrate your offline and online fundraising efforts. The great news is that you realize the importance of this! Hats off to you!!

We've seen that an integrated offline/online effort can result in enhancing the overall value of a donor by leaps and bounds. In fact, in the recent study Next Generation, most donors prefer multichannel communication. In other words, combining your internet strategy with your direct mail efforts is an all-around fantastic idea.

Some of the best, most-successful integrated marketing campaigns I've seen start an email right around when the direct mail piece will drop. This is a great way to say, "You'll see something in mail from us in the next day or so. Be sure to open it! Or, even better, give securely now online and save trees/staff resources/time/braincells/etc."

Now, if you're the sort of organization that has a nice list of offline donors but don't have email addresses for all of them, you're in the majority of non-profit organizations. Encouraging your offline donors to come online to give helps build an online profile for them and allows you to communicate with them by email. So, make sure you include ways for your donors give online and make it worth their while. In your BRE, have a big red area that reminds them they can save postage by making their gift online. In your P.S. make sure you remind them that they can easily make a small gift each month which allows them to include you in their monthly budget but also gives you the foresight to plan ways to achieve your organizational goals in advance.You get the drift...give them a short, easy URL to your donation form in your offline piece and watch the online donors come pouring in. You can point them directly to http://mfn.convio.net/donate. Even if they still want to send in a check, be sure you have a place for them to add their email address so you can add them to your newsletter list for future campaigns and general cultivation.

You can also send a message a while after the first direct mail piece drops reminding your donors that they should give. (And don't forget to say "If you've already sent in a gift, thanks so much."...just in case)

Also, consider thanking your donors online after your campaign is over. For instance, hopefully you collected a chunk of new email addresses from offline donors. Add them to C360 and send them a quick note of thanks using the Go! eCard guide.

One to three emails during your offline campaign is not too much email. Again, studies show that people actually respond better when communicated with in several different ways.

If anyone has tried other multichannel ideas and could share, please post them here.

Happy Fundraising!

rachael