Ten Years of SWAG <<This blog post is authored by Dan Krueger. Before joining JHL, he worked in annual giving at Florida State University and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He has organized SWAG since its start. >> On Thursday, June 6, 2024, almost fifty annual giving professionals in higher education – and additional...
Effective Fundraising Appeals for Nonprofits: A Comprehensive Guide Craving a Mission: Impossible moment? How about this? Your mission is to create effective fundraising appeals for your organization. If you fail, kids go hungry, blood goes uncollected and the homeless will remain so. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim. No pressure in...
AI and Direct Mail: Part 2 Roughly a year ago we did a blog on AI and direct mail. Since AI is growing and changing faster than a Labrador puppy, it’s a good time to revisit the topic and identify more ways AI can help you create a winning direct-mail campaign. More choices When we...
Fundraising for Athletics: Leveraging Direct Mail to Support Your Donor Strategies Over my three years at JHL, I’ve been tasked with providing quarterly content for our blog for current and future JHL Advance customers. As a direct mail company, our focus has always been on how our product and services can be partnered successfully with...
Choosing The Right (Measurable) Outcomes for Direct-Mail Campaigns There’s some new research from the B2B marketing-research firm Ascend2 about the value of direct mail. The firm surveyed 441 marketing and sales decision-makers and found that 84% of respondents believe direct mail helps them improve their company’s image, while even more said that direct mail drives...
Greatest Bits, Vol. II: Hidden Treasures in our Marketing Blogs In the three years that I’ve been a part of JHL, I’ve been contributing a quarterly blog post with content specific to our JHL Advance customers. It’s usually been some combination of my past experiences in annual giving, current practices and upcoming trends in direct...
Best Practices for Using Catalogs in Direct-Mail Campaigns As digital marketing costs increase, privacy and copyright issues cloud AI’s future, and placement concerns dog digital advertising, retailers are turning back to catalogs. Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Ikea – and even digital natives like Wayfair and Amazon – have rediscovered the power of catalogs to engage customers and...
An Eye on Design: Helping Your Graphic Designer Create the Direct Mail Piece You Need Special thank you to the following for their contributions: Holly Champagne, a 35-year graphic design professional and owner of Champagne Creative which has been recognized locally, regionally and nationally for their work, including national first place recognition for their...
Scheduling Your Direct-Mail Campaign For Maximum Impact: 7 Tips We were talking to a product manager the other day who has to coordinate 124 product releases every year – that’s more than ten per month! That seems like a lot, but face it – everyone in marketing is slammed right now. There’s more to do, more to...
Best Practices For Direct Mail 2023 And Beyond If you wrote a standard, garden-variety blog about best practices in direct mail, it would tell you things you already know: focus on your target audience, include a call to action, use readable fonts and colors, and so forth. There’s nothing wrong with these recommendations other than...