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There's simply no excuse for it...

2011-09-01T03:56:28Z

Just this morning I received a donor mail appeal from an internationally recognised overseas aid charity, to whom I have recently donated (I'll spare their blushes by not mentioning any names). It started out okay . . . they got my name right in the envelope window. But then I opened it. The letter begins . . .

Dear Friend . . .

Dear who?

You know my name, for goodness sake. You've printed it in my address. Why can't you use it when you hail me from the first line of your 'personalised' letter too?

You'd think by now that non-profits would have consigned this artifact of data prehistory to the trash, but it seems not.

I could try putting a bit of positive spin on this particular DM by finding some other redeeming qualitites (though sadly there are none) but it would make no difference. If you've got a database that can handle donor names and addresses, there is simply no excuse for opening a fundraising letter with, Dear Friend.

If your organisation is still doing this . . . then stop. Your supporters deserve better.

Not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but...

2011-06-09T03:52:04Z

Honest. I'm just not the type.

I much prefer the obscurity of a darkened corner to hide away in while I tap away on my keyboard and drink thick, dark coffee.

But it's not every day you win a "Special Award for Copywriting", so I figured on this occasion it was worth a modest toot.

The campaign in question - a hard-hitting donor pack for Women's Aid - scooped the "Special Award for Best Copywriting" at the 2011 An Post Direct Marketing Awards. The campaign was produced by Irish fundraising agency Ask Direct.

Other Ask Direct wins on the night written by yours truly included a Gold Award for Best Acquisition, a Silver for Best High Volume Direct Mail, and a Bronze for Best Charity Campaign.

SOFII looks hot!

2010-07-29T22:41:36Z

Just a quick post to congratulate everyone at SOFII on the new website design. Looks hot. Great navigation. Easy to use. So inspired I just had to donate.

For those that haven't yet visited SOFII, it's quite simply the best resource for information, ideas and tutorials on fundraising anywhere on the web.

Just go take a look yourself.

Visit SOFII at: http://www.sofii.org/

Or follow on Twitter @SOFIIisHOT

Looking forward to more great content in the future guys.

Sometimes the tail really can wag the dog: why you should inspire your copywriter to write a more powerful PS, and how...

2010-02-01T22:04:29Z

Yes I know, the headline sounds like one of those silver-bullet-secrets-of-the-copywriting-gods things. But this advice is not. Because… and please forgive me for the hyperbole… there really is one line that can turbocharge the results of your direct mail. And it’s the PS. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with a list of 100 things you ‘could’ do with a PS. I’m going to give you my own wish list… five simple things I wish all clients would give me when I sit down to write a letter. Like many direct response copywriters, I often write the PS first. The reason is simple - all the research conducted on the way people read direct mail letters, shows that after reading their name in the address line, most people flip straight to the end of your letter. And if there’s a PS there, they read it. In other words, your PS is possibly the first thing your donors read after opening your direct mail. Plus, if your letter hooks the donor, and they read to the end, it will also be the last thing they read (or rather re-read) before they reach for their cheque book. Consequently, the PS is the single most important line in any fundraising direct mail pack. And as such, it requires special attention. Ideally it should encapsulate the entire core proposition of your DM campaign, your ask, plus that something extra that will boost response. So with all of that in mind… here’s my PS wish list: 1. Don’t ask for ‘ancillary information’ to be put in the PS The job of your PS is to inform the donor exactly what you’d like them to do next, how much you’d like them to give, why you need their gift, and what it will do for your beneficiaries. The only reason for putting stuff that doesn’t seem to fit in the letter body into a PS, is if you’d prefer your donors to know this ancillary fact, than to write you out a cheque. 2. Put a one line description in your brief stating exactly why you need one specific donor to make this particular gift Not a paragraph. Not a background statement. A short one liner, aimed at an individual donor, for example: “We need your gift to… … help us bring water to a village in Bangladesh” … give an abandoned dog like Butch a new home” … to keep our community outreach programme running” And having done this, be prepared to rap your creative team firmly over the knuckles if you don’t see this line rephrased in different ways in both the headline and the PS of your letter. 3. Give your writer a real deadline to work with As Samuel Johnson once remarked: “It focuses a man’s mind wonderfully if he knows he is to be hanged in the morning.” Urgent need is important to donors. And let’s face it, at any given point in time, every non-profit has an urgent need for donations. Letting this assumption slide in your PS is not good enough. Just saying the word ‘urgent’, won’t cut it. You need to demonstrate the urgency. And nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. There will be times that you can do this explicitly, emergency appeals being the classic example. But even when you have no organisational deadlines to meet, it’s sometimes easier than you’d think to create a sense of urgency. Here’s a very simple example of how you can gently introduce a deadline without being specific about consequences:

P.S. If you can rush us your gift of $75 by Wednesday the 19th of August - I’m certain Butch will find a new loving home before the month is out… could you do that?

On the other hand, if you can tie the deadline to specific consequences, like keeping a vital service going; giving a child a simple eye operation before it’s too late; lobbying government ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote, etc… so much the better. 4. Put aside a “Bonus Proof” of benefit Think for a minute of the kind of “Not only but also” promises made at the end of DRTV commercials for shopping channel type products. Well, the “Bonus Proof” is a fundraising manager’s less sensational equivalent of this proven direct response technique. It could be in the form of a different ask, e.g.

P.S. Your $75 today could find Butch a new home… but for a regular gift of just $15 a month you could help many more of his furry friends to find loving homes too…

Or a different case study that demonstrates the efficacy of the gift for which you’re asking, e.g:

P.S. Butch reminds me of a lovely dog called Spike, who went to a wonderful home just four weeks ago. All it took was a $75 gift from a caring supporter like you. Could you be the one to find Butch his new home?

The idea is to give the donor something extra, something not already in the letter, a bonus demonstration of how the gift you’re asking for will directly help your beneficiaries. 5. Provide a contact point for supporters Even though they’re emotionally invested in what you do, your donors rarely, if ever, get to see the tangible benefits of what they make possible firsthand. But by giving them the name of a someone who does (plus a postal address/e-mail/or if possible a phone number), you can give your donors the next best thing. A human contact point - even if they never use it - draws your donors closer to you, makes them feel more valued, adds to your credibility, and gives donors a way to ask questions, or simply to tell you how much they like you. The PS is the perfect place for this ‘point of contact’, because it adds value, warmth and credibility at the two most important points during your donor’s interaction with your letter… when they first take it out of the envelope… and just before they reach for their cheque book and pen. Needless to say, you’re not always going to be able to do all of these things in - but three out of five will make a huge impact on the results of your mailings. If you can tick boxes 1 and 2, plus any one of the other three, I’m confident you’ll see a corresponding lift in response rates. If you can tick all five, you’re letters will be… (back with the hyperbole) …turbocharged. And the real beauty is that every single additional dollar raised by ticking these boxes comes at no additional cost to your organisation. Oh, and before I go… P.S. Check out these letter samples here and you might think my postscripts fall short of what I've just said... but then, the above is a wish list, and us copywriters rarely get everything we wish for. P.P.S. If you brief me on your next direct mail campaign before Wednesday 19th August, I can help you put these PS techniques (plus all the other cunning tricks I have up my sleeve) to work boosting your response rates. Just call Jules on 07 863 4004…

John Key needs a plane ticket... can you help him out?

2009-10-14T10:16:46Z

I've been so busy in recent weeks that blogging has been relegated to the bottom of a very long list. But I had to take five minutes out to mention the current leg of Greenpeace NZ's excellent "Sign On" campaign. With just weeks to go until Copenhagen and one of the most important climate meetings in history, New Zealand PM, John Key, has apparently decided that he might just stay home! What to do? Well Greenpeace have decided to give him a helping hand. They're holding a series of cake sales, sausage sizzles and collections to buy him a plane ticket! Great campaigning work, great fundraising, very funny, and well worth a fiver! Just click on the pic link above if you'd like to chip in and help John on his way!

Has SOFII just spawned a new breed of newsletter? I hope so...

2009-07-30T00:46:06Z

I find myself liking SOFII more and more. Once again, they've given us some wonderful food for thought via an insightful debate. This time on the pros and cons of newsletters, with Tom Ahern for, and Sean Triner against. I've never been a fan of newsletters myself - for all the reasons given by both advocates in this debate - but primarily because there's just so little in most of them that actually matters to donors. Interestingly though, I found myself agreeing with, and enjoying, the arguments put forward by both Tom and Sean. But how can that be... I can't be both for and against newsletters, can I? I think the reason is that essentially, both Tom and Sean agree on the most important point... that most donor newsletters are rubbish. The remaining few fall into what could probably be classed as a different category altogether. Tom Ahern would probably call them 'Newsletters done right', while Sean Triner may refer to them as 'highly personalized news-oriented letters'. Either way, we're talking about a new breed of beast. If not quite dead, the 'old-style' newsletter should be quickly put out of its misery, and replaced with something more meaningful and more profitable. Call them what you like, send them as stand-alones or as part of a pack, let the results decide which route works best... just make sure they do these two things: 1. Give donors what they hunger for most - evidence that their gifts are working. 2. Give non-profits what they need - engaged, happy, commited supporters... and their gifts.

Does your DM copy look like this?

2009-07-24T07:40:06Z

Thanks to an old post I recently found on Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog, I’ve just discovered the joys of Wordle. And I love it. Wordle generated this Word Cloud from a job I'm working on right now. If you haven’t used it yet, try it out. It’s both fun and instructive. Just like a tag cloud on a blog it features the most prominent words used in your copy. The bigger the word... the more you’ve used it. What you get is a wonderful snapshot view of just how emotive, warm and donor focused (or not) your copy is. A great fun tool for fundraising copywriters like me. But for the fundraising departments of some non-profits, I think it's considerably more important than that. The pressure to sanitize emotive copy in order to bring it in line with a supposed "organisational ethos" can sometimes be hard to resist. In such situations, Wordle could prove to be a last gasp vaccine against otherwise good copy being turned into a jargon laden snooze-fest destined for the nearest wastepaper basket. Like an actual example of website copy I just found that produced this...

Damn, I wish I'd thought of that! Part I

2009-07-14T22:21:17Z

Thought I'd start a series of posts featuring the kind of fundraising campaigns that made me go: "Damn, I wish I'd thought of that!" This one - Gothenburg Homeless Aid's "Return-to-sender" campaign from Christmas 2007 - is without doubt one of my all time favourites. Why? Well, anything that can beat previous response rates by a whopping 60%, gets my attention, naturally. (Click on the image link to check out the pack, the vid & get the full story). But there are two things that had to happen long before that success was achieved. And they're what impress me most... Reason 1. The creative team behind the idea were prepared to think outside the box As a result, they came up with a brilliantly simple idea that deserves a place on Chip & Dan Heath's MadeToStickBlog. The magic is in the way the envelope presents the recipient with the beautifully irresistible puzzle: "Why is this letter addressed to some guy in a tunnel, and why has it been sent to me?" On flipping it over, she discovers that she is the return addressee! At this stage, it's impossible not to open the letter. And you can just picture the cogs of realisation turning in her head as she reads the Christmas card inside. Brilliant! But let's not forget the other reason it was so successful... Reason 2. The client had the guts to do it This is no small deal. Would you have the guts to put 20,000 intentionally misaddressed letters in the post, and trust your postal service to get them to the return address on the back successfully? Gothenburg Homeless Aid did. They trusted their agency. They trusted the idea. They trusted their donors. And I salute them for their courage. It certainly paid off for the homeless people of Gothenburg.

How to persuade a donor to write you a cheque for $20,000...

2009-07-09T22:46:04Z

Don't worry, this isn't one of those "100 secrets of a top copywriter" things. It's real. If you want your appeals to generate individual gifts of $20,000, you need to do one thing... Ask for it! But ask for it well. As part of a recent emergency appeal - produced through Ask Direct - for Irish women's organisation, Women's Aid, I recommended a lift letter to high value donors asking for individual gifts of €10,000 (NZ$22,0000) to help save their... Emergency Phone Line. Women's Aid were facing a devastating fall in revenue due to public funding cutbacks. This was threatening their emergency phone line. The theory behind the €10,000 ask was the belief that somewhere among the Women's Aid donor base, was someone with the same passion and conviction for their work, as Women's Aid themselves.

Some Excerpts: I’m enclosing this special note to you because you’ve become a special kind of friend to Women’s Aid. In fact you’re amongst our most important supporters… … I know this seems like a lot to ask. €10,000 is a huge sum of money. But given the exceptional situation we’re facing right now, I feel compelled to seek out such exceptional people.

Within days of mailing, Women's Aid received a cheque for €10,000, plus several more for over €1,000. Overall, the campaign generated a response rate of almost 20% with a 4:1 return on investment. It also produced some very helpful national press coverage . So I guess the moral of the story is two-fold:

1. When you're in a crisis, be honest with your donors - tell them about it before it's too late for them to help you, and... 2. Don't be afraid to ask for precisely what you need, or you won't get it.

The argument over how much to ask for during a recession will no doubt persist, but I think the guiding light should be this: trust your donors. They're your donors because they care about you and your cause. And because they care, they want to help. So... as Marc Pitman would say, go ahead and: "Ask Without Fear."

A picture paints a thousand words, but...

2009-06-17T09:45:53Z

They say a picture paints a thousand words. And of course, they're right. But when it comes to effective fundraising through direct response media... it's the thousand words that make all the difference. Because while it goes without saying that evocative imagery can attract your donors' eyes and open their hearts... it's persuasive and emotive copy that opens their cheque books. Without words that paint pictures, words that stir emotions, words that tell your stories and make your donors feel part of your solution... you won't get the results you're looking for. Or the revenue. That's where the craft of writing effective direct response fundraising copy comes in. And it's the difference between getting an adequate result, and beating all expectations.