Acquisition – Direct Mail: The Exquisite Corpse

October 29, 2012      Roger Craver

For nearly 20 years prognosticators have prematurely heralded the death of direct mail.

After all, they argue, “online” is far cheaper and faster, plus donor demographics are changing, so it’s only a matter of time before direct mail is dead and buried.

Only trouble with these dire predictions is that they’re not supported by facts or experience. So, as The Agitator begins exploring various acquisition channels, I want to start off by making certain everyone understands that the “Direct Mail Is Dead Myth” is just that — a myth.  To believe otherwise is to deny the existence of the most predictable and potent of the acquisition channels.

The other day Tom and I received a thoughtful note on ethics and transparency from Chuck Pruitt, a veteran fundraiser and Co-Managing Director of the A.B. Data Group, the firm that handled the Obama campaign’s direct mail in 2008 and is doing the same for the President’s re-election effort. The note was a timely reminder that back in June 2009 in an Agitator post titled Chuck Pruitt is Mad we featured the reasons Chuck felt the dire predictions of the death of direct mail were groundless.

Here’s just the intro to give you a taste of Chuck’s take on the matter …

“For as long as I have been involved in the direct response fundraising world – now over two decades – the prediction of the impending demise of direct mail has been a recurring theme. With the advent of the Internet, this has taken on a new dimension. For now, according to the “direct mail is dying” chorus, online fundraising will step in and provide the mechanism to raise all the dollars direct mail used to produce and capture a growing share of a younger demographic waiting to give.

What has always mystified me about some (but far from all) of the online marketing community is their insistence that for online fundraising to rise, direct mail fundraising must fall. And what angers me about “studies” such as those offered by Borrell Associates [Agitator Editors’ Note: You can find the Borrell study here.] and given legitimacy by blogs like Frogloop is they camouflage their underlying biases. Borrell Associates is, according to their website, “a media research, consulting and project firm specializing in Internet advertising.” It should come as no surprise that such a firm would be predicting that the demise of direct mail is occurring while, according to Borrell, “email advertising continues to surge and is now the number one online ad category.” Quite frankly, the Borrell study has about as much credibility to me as the tobacco industry’s studies on the health effects of smoking in the 1960’s and 70’s.

This gets me to my second point. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (a client of our firm for many years) was fond of saying, “You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to your facts.” So let’s try to elevate the “direct mail is dying and will be replaced by email marketing” debate by looking at a few salient facts.

Fact:  The direct mail donor universe is alive and well and actually shows little signs of rapidly diminishing – at least in the next decade.

Fact:  The growth of online fundraising is happening but it is happening much more slowly than many predicted.

Fact:  There are enormous multi-channel marketing opportunities out there for smart people with open minds.”

Chuck offers ample evidence for each of these fact statements in his paper, which I encourage you to read.

Pay particular attention in Chuck’s paper to his prescient comments on multi-channel marketing opportunities where direct mail is concerned. A sampling:

“We have found that building successful multi-channel marketing programs to move online donors offline and expand direct mail-generated donors to online contributors requires a different creative and strategic approach. The Internet is changing the direct mail experience. And marketing success in the future will recognize the changing sources of news and information and, if the goal is to convert an online donor to a multi-channel direct mail donor, you cannot rely on tired or traditional direct mail techniques.

“This is not intended as a defense of direct mail fundraising. Truth be told, it needs no defense. The facts and the evidence, not to mention the continued successful use by scores of outstanding nonprofit, charitable and advocacy organizations, as well as political candidates is defense enough. What troubles me is the effort to diminish or intimidate successful organizations and professional fundraisers who are currently using or might try direct mail fundraising and see it as some sort of fundraising dinosaur to be avoided.”

In short, as we explore the ins and outs of the complex issue called ‘acquisition’ it’s important to fight any mindset – any myth – that might prevent an organization from taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that come from marrying the exquisite corpse of direct mail with a wide range of multi-channel opportunities.

Roger

P.S. In my next post I’ll share some exciting experimentation and findings from Target Analytics use of online advertising to boost postal direct mail campaigns.

 

6 responses to “Acquisition – Direct Mail: The Exquisite Corpse”

  1. Mitch Hinz says:
    October 29, 2012 at 2:33 am

    As usual, its Roger, 1, Direct Mail Critics, 0. Thanks as always, Roger.

    Can’t wait to hear about the Target work on multi-channel impact.

    Q: When is the USA going to wake up and smell the recurring donor coffee?

    cheers,
    Mitch

  2. Brent says:
    October 29, 2012 at 10:02 am

    As the acquisition specialist in an agency that works exclusively with non-profits, our experience also bears out the claim that Direct Mail acquisition provides the most predictable and cost-effective source of new donors. It’s not that other techniques can’t out-perform DM, it’s that they don’t do so predictably.

    However, the fact that DM acquisition, with average response rates ranging between 0.5% and 1%, is still the best arrow in our quiver, kind of raises some questions about the whole donor acquisition paradigm, in my mind. In what other professional endeavour would a 99% “failure rate” be seen as success?

    I think that we need to get better at finding people whose hearts and minds are aligned with our causes, and then give them a really compelling offer to participate. And hopefully, as we all get better at finding and offering, we find that we’re sending fewer unopened envelopes into the recycling pile.

    Thanks for the article,

    Brent

  3. Clint O'Brien says:
    October 29, 2012 at 10:30 am

    Chuck Pruitt’s criticism of Frogloop.com (a blog hosted and operated by my company, Care2) for reporting on the conclusions of the Borrell study, without conveying enough skepticism toward Borrell’s possible bias against Direct Mail, is a fair one.

    But I would not want folks to conclude, based on Care2’s having published a post about this Borell report last year, that we Care2 folks think that Direct Mail is dead or dying.

    Far from it!

    Our more nuanced understanding of what’s really going on — which is supported by the Target Analytics industrywide benchmarking studies that we follow closely — is that Direct Mail is declining only as an ACQUISITION channel, with the overall volume of donors acquired via DM seeming to decline steadily each year, and by more than 20% cumulatively, for the past eight years. Also, the average age of donors being acquired through Direct Mail industrywide is increasing every year, and this trend cannot be comforting to nonprofit fundraisers who need to recruit a mix of older and younger donors, to ensure their organizations’ futures. So we certainly agree with the increasing trend among nonprofits to not put all their acquisition eggs in the Direct Marketing basket. And this is one of the big reasons why Care2 has grown over the past 12 years to have more than 1,000 nonprofit clients using our online acquisition services as one of their major sources for growing their base of multichannel donors and supporters.

    However, we definitely don’t agree with the idea that Direct Mail is declining as a channel for cultivating donors and supporters — and for converting supporters into donors. Actually, in our own business of recruiting high volumes of opted-in, “warm” donor leads for our clients, we at Care2 are thankful that it seems Direct Mail continues to be an effective channel for donor cultivation and conversion. We strongly encourage our clients who have DM programs to take full advantage of this very complementary channel (it’s the reason that we provide postal addresses with the leads that we deliver to our clients) along with telemarketing and any other channels at their disposal. To do otherwise, we often say, is to deprive your organization of many donors that you otherwise would obtain via your Care2 campaign.

    It seems to us that our most savvy and successful charity clients always ask the question: “What’s the best channel to accomplish each specific goal?” Whereas years ago the answer was often “Direct Mail” for every goal — from acquisition to retention to upgrading — now there are several other good options, with varying levels of effectiveness. DM is not the only kid in the sandbox anymore. But the great news is that DM plays very, very well with the other, newer kids in the sandbox.

    Clint O’Brien
    Care2

    clint@care2team.com
    http://www.care2team.com
    202-785-7308

  4. Roger Craver says:
    October 29, 2012 at 11:23 am

    Mitch,

    Thanks for your question on ‘the recurring donor problem.’ You’re one of few fundraisers who’ve worked all around the world under various banking systems including the one in the U.S. Until U.S. consumers become far more accustomed to automatic bank debits — and when paper checks and credit cards are the exception rather than the rule –we’ll continue to wrestle with this problem.

    Best,

    Roger

  5. Pat Krewe says:
    November 8, 2012 at 3:02 pm

    Thank You! The direct mail is dead myth is just plain silly. Sure web marketing is growing, but mail marketing is still very effective. This is especially true if you have direct mail organizations that combine traditional effective strategies with web strategies, web + mail integration essentially. Direct mail isn’t dead, but it’s not quite business as usual either.

  6. Carrie Miller says:
    July 14, 2015 at 8:08 am

    Didn’t read all the comments. But I *love* the title of this post. It rotates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse

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