DM Campaign to match GO Program Efundraising Oct schedule

csutton

I am currently planning our fall direct mail appeal that we generally send out in mid-October. This year since we have a large data base with emails I want to split the appeal up and send it by Convio to those who we have email addresses for, and those we only have snail mail addresses for to send the DM to them the old fashioned way. I noticed that in October on the schedule we are suppose to put together a fundraising letter together as part of the go program. DO you suggest that we use the same campaign or a separate one which may cause donor fatigue? If you suggest we use the same letter, when will you be providing the best practices information for us so that it can be as similar as possible?

Adam Lemmon

Great question Chris!

A couple of things to note here

1) The End-of-year fundraising campaign that you see on the calendar does not necessarily have to happen in October. We will be posting the end-of-year fundraising guide document on the community in September, and so October would be on the early side for when you submit and execute your end of year fundraising campaign. BECAUSE you are already planning an offline appeal -- I would suggest waiting until Nov or even december before launching your online end of year fundraising campaign.

2) You mentioned the possibility of sending the offline appeal to individuals that you don't have an email address for -- I think it is also important to send the offline appeal to folks who you DO have an email address for. While raising money online is certainly an effective strategy, there might be folks who are expecting your fall appeal message to arrive in the postal mail. You want to reach out to your donors in multiple channels when possible. Integrated fundraising campaigns (campaigns that have both an offline and online communication strategy) have proven to be very effective. In this case, Convio Go! does not have a planned structure to help support an integrated fundraising campaign -- that said, we can address your concern about the timing of your messages:

My suggestion would be to send the DM appeal to all of your donors. In the October online eNewsletter, we could easily put a small blurb as one of the Feature Items saying something like "You might have seen us in your mailbox -- Did you know you can make your donation online?" This way you are using your regularly scheduled communication slot to support your offline campaign, but you aren't being too aggressive. You're simply reinforcing your message. Patrick or others -- any additional suggestions?

Great question Chris!!!