The DonorVoice Behavioral Science Team is calling for applications to participate in a direct mail innovation project.  Details are below.

Simply Click here to express interest and the team will follow up accordingly.

Overview

Your best “digital” donors are your direct mail recipients.  And still, almost all your charity mail goes directly in the trash, failing to do the job you gave it.  Why?

The DonorVoice Behavioral Science Team has cracked the code on donor mindsets, identifying three unique approaches donors use to sort and process charity mail.

• Defensive & Selective
  • I feel I must protect myself from the mail I get from charities.
  • I donate primarily to charities of a certain type.
  • I usually know before I open the envelope whether I will give to a charity.
• Quick & Permissive
  • I give to a wide variety of charities.
  • I don’t read letters from charities very carefully before deciding whether to make a donation.
  • I use simple “rules of thumb” for deciding whether to donate to a charity.
• Cause-Driven & Cautious
  • I write down when I donate to a charity so that I will not donate again too soon
  • If a charity seems good, it might make it on “my list.”
  • If a charity appeal conflicts with my political views, I am more likely to throw it away without considering it.

Each donor applies one of these mindsets to three, different decision points:

• Do I Open it?
• Do I Keep it or Immediately Throw Away?
• Do I respond to it?

Our research shows that designing to get a “yes” on the Open question is different from what’s required to get them to Keep.

And Converting also requires a re-think.

What if “Make your tax-deductible check payable to….” is suppressing results?

Check writing is the least popular payment method by a wide margin and the trendline is only going down. How to reimagine the activation, conversion path beyond a QR code and the decades old reply form design and format?

So how do you transform your mail from overlooked to unmissable? We need to design and message to address differing attitudes and each direct mail funnel decision point. Join us in breaking the mold of one-size-fits-all approaches and come on a behavioral journey to send mail that matches how your donors behave with it.

 Click here to express interest and the team will follow up accordingly.

 Details

• Together we’ll conduct primary research, running 1,000’s of tests with your donors. Using our proprietary Pre-Test Tool, we can test quickly and reliably in a quick turnaround, low-cost, risk-free environment.
• The ideas will be directed at OE (copy, design, format) and the reply form.
• The winning concepts will be tested in-market with your acquisition/lapsed mailings.   The analysis will focus on conversion with matchback analysis of online giving during a 90-day window.

 What You’ll Get

• Control beating ideas
• A new activation form futureproofed for payment method
• Rich, nuanced understanding of what caused success and failure
• Institutional knowledge of the different ways your donors sort and consider your mail

 Your Commitment

• Desire to re-think and reimagine direct mail
• Expectation that ideas will be evidence based
• Three test panels of 25k (minimum) in acquisition and/or lapsed names
  • Can be spread over 2 mail dates if needed
• One-time investment to offset DonorVoice time and research costs

Kevin

P.S.  Click here to express interest and the team will follow up accordingly.