I have the privilege of collaborating with incredibly talented and knowledgeable direct mail experts at JHL. Their guidance was invaluable when I worked in higher education. As a member of the JHL team, they continue to help me navigate the ever-evolving direct mail landscape today.
The JHL Blog offers a regularly updated collection of insightful articles. While my contributions focus on topics for advancement offices, their content is primarily aimed at printers and marketers. However, they often share valuable perspectives from their work with nonprofits.
While the subject matter is geared towards current and potential clients, I still find information that is incredibly helpful as I am working with those in annual giving and alumni engagement. To save you the time of reading through all of them (if you haven’t already), I’ve compiled my annual “greatest bits” from the posts written by my colleagues that I found to be the most impactful.
Choosing The Right (Measurable) Outcomes for Direct-Mail Campaigns (Feb. 2024)
Many of these measurements won’t register instantaneous change. It may take a year or longer for the impact of a mailing to be felt in increased sales, and things like star ratings and the sales pipeline take a while to populate.
For that reason, it’s imperative that you keep higher-ups from rushing to judgment on the value of a mailing.
Any calculation of the brand-lift outcome ultimately comes back to sales (or donations, if you’re a non-profit). How much is a customer worth short-term (per sale or donation) or long-term (over their lifespan)?
AI and Direct Mail: Part 2 (Apr. 24)
Maybe the best things of all are the AI-powered tools inside the Adobe Creative Suite.
Historically, Photoshop and Illustrator have been as powerful as they are user-unfriendly. They’re not fun for people who aren’t graphic designers by training but occasionally have to do design or graphic work.
One of the greatest challenges for non-designers pressed into design service is removing the background from photos. In Photoshop you can ask its Firefly tool to remove a background and voila! More often than not, the background is gone.
Note “more often than not.” If the background isn’t clearly defined, or if you give Photoshop an unclear instruction, you may get something truly warped. But keep at it! You’ll eventually get to a good spot.
Effective Fundraising Appeals for Nonprofits: A Comprehensive Guide (June 2024)
Effective fundraising appeals are a mix of personalization, storytelling and clear calls to action.
If that sounds beyond your skill level or pay grade, don’t be afraid to use ChatGPT to jump-start the process. Just remember that ChatGPT will give you an appeal that sounds like everyone else’s appeal, so change it up to make it authentic and impactful.
Finally, remember to incorporate SPAF into all your appeals.
What’s SPAF? It’s an unwieldy acronym that stands for:
- Storytelling
- Personalization
- Action / Appeal
- Follow-up
Transactional Fundraising (Aug. 2024)
Direct mail provides a physical touchpoint. It makes the digital transaction real. It can supply concrete proof of how donations are being used.
In a digital world where everything is malleable and mutable, direct mail is tangible. And it’s that characteristic which non-profits must turn to their advantage in their direct-mail fundraising appeals.
However, if you take that to mean that direct mail should only be used to provide tangible proof while digital channels serve as conduits for fundraising revenue, not so fast.
Direct mail is still a great way for non-profits to raise funds. And digital channels have the ability to tell success stories via video and audio. The secret sauce comes in when the two maximize their strengths in service of a coordinated campaign.
Gen Z and Fundraising (Oct. 24)
There’s no question that Gen Z is more willing to interact with physical objects and more resistant to digital messaging.
What does that mean for your fundraising operations? Print is not a bad idea when you’re trying to reach Gen Z.
It can’t be just any print, however. For Gen Z, you need to focus on authentic stories of the good your organization does. You need to show diversity, while at the same time showing people like them being involved.
You need quality pieces that aren’t ostentatious. The sweet spot is small, but it’s not nonexistent.
By Dan Krueger – 1/2/2025