For years I’ve been quietly steaming about two inventions that I suspect have done great damage to effective direct mail fundraising. Even calling them out will make me seem like a Luddite, a curmudgeon or worse. But truly, I haven’t lost my mind, so bear with me.

The first technological culprit is Microsoft’s “Excel”, or for that matter any of the digital spreadsheet programs that preceded Excel going all the way back to Visicalc in 1979. That’s how long I’ve harbored this particular grudge. Although I have nothing but admiration for the genius and grandeur of their designs and usefulness, it’s the way they’re idiotically applied that gets my goat.

In the case of digital spreadsheet programs they’ve done more to stifle interpretation of results and impede proper planning than anything I know. Show me the consultant or nonprofit staffer who slavishly imports results into a program or copies the 2010 direct mail plan into 2011’s, adjusting a few numbers for “inflation”, “the economy”  or whatever, and I’ll show you a “Plan” that is fundamentally clueless, devoid of slow, painstaking thought and proper consideration. The kind of thought that only occurs when you occasionally have to put pencil to paper and pause to consider data which is not instantly and thoughtlessly imported and then ignored.

The second – and because I’m a copywriter, by far the most horrid – villain in the Technology Hall of Horrors is Microsoft’s “Word” and all other computerized word processing programs. Yes, they make life easier and catch my spelling mistakes. However, everything that’s printed out appears absolutely uniform. Neat. Tidy. Boring.  And response-reducing.

Successful copywriters have long understood the importance of breaking up text, stopping the mind’s eye with boldface, italics, strike-thrus, handwritten marginal  notes, and even text that is circled or marked with an arrow. Whatever gets the reader to stop or at least pause in her tracks and focus on the point being made.

At last! An even newer technology than Word to the rescue.

You can imagine my joy to learn that this new process, based on neuroscience, rather than my curmudgeonly grudges, is capable of spicing up and reordering digital typography to make it more readable and more response-prone by the customers, prospects and donors.

It’s called ReadSmart, and it offers a way to increase response rates without changing copy, mailing universe, postage treatment or package format. Bending the “rules” of ho-hum, standardized typographic practice, ReadSmart makes small, customized adjustments to every character in a document — without changing any of the copy. Even though these changes are hardly recognizable to the average person, they improve the understanding and appearance of that text. The science behind ReadSmart claims the changes made will increase reader engagement, reader persuasion and, yes, reader response rate.

So how does it work? I’m told by the folks at Production Solutions, who are using this with a number of clients, that ReadSmart is the result of over 20 years of research examining how messages are transmitted to the brain and how to best format message text to achieve maximum effectiveness.

The claim: “This research was performed by a team of experts in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience and computer science. It was this team that developed software algorithms to subtly improve the arrangement of text on the printed or digital page. The proprietary software is now available through ReadSmart-approved providers.”

The test results are promising, according to Production Solutions, who  asked Dave Jorgensen, Senior Director of Membership Marketing at National Wildlife Federation, to test this new technology on his January donor appeal mailing. They segmented the list of 50,000 names into two equal groups.

Here’s their report: “The first group received the unedited control package. The second group received a test package with the ReadSmart version of the letter. There was no other variable introduced between the two packages.

“The final results of the test were measurable and noteworthy: the response rate, average gift and net revenue all increased with the ReadSmart version text.” As you can see from the results below, this new technology made a real difference in the ROI of the package.

• Response rate increased: 9.67%
• Average gift increased: 4.2%
• Net revenue increased: 26%

Apparently Jorgensen (and by way of disclosure I worked with him in another life for ten years and he’s a hard-nosed analyst) was impressed with the overall lift of the test and plans to continue testing ReadSmart in his donor appeal program throughout 2011. “If the results of this test are sustained for the balance of the year, this could have a six figure impact on our bottom line,” Jorgensen reported. The National Wildlife Federation test corroborates the data that other mailers are seeing on their ReadSmart tests.

Production Solutions has a number of other clients testing this new approach and claims they too are also seeing an increase in their response rates.

Apparently, the effective use of ReadSmart is not limited to direct mail letters. Production Solutions says it’s also being used for publications, brochures, catalogs, books, magazines and any other text-based items that are designed to be informative or persuasive.

Cost? About $300 a page. Amazingly cheap considering what’s at stake when it comes to most direct mail letters. And it’s easy to use. Your digital copy is sent to Production Solutions via email attachment. They run it through their magic Read Smart Machine and, presto! … it’s good to go.

I can’t wait to give it a try and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Now that I think we might have Word on the run, anyone out there want to take on Excel?

Roger