The Holy Grail Of Direct Mail

January 10, 2007      Admin

Direct mail guru Denny Hatch has written another marvelous piece, this time celebrating two direct mail letters he regards as the best of all time.

All we'll tell you here (link below) is that one was written in the 12th Century, and the other survived as a control from 1974 to 2003, accounting for one billion dollars of revenue for its happy beneficiary. As is his custom, in the course of telling his story Denny includes a bouquet of wise tips for effective copywriting.

Denny's article inspires us to launch an initiative to compile and publish here on The Agitator a library of “Best Ever” direct mail fundraising letters. But we need your help.

We invite you to submit any mail package you or your organization have used or created that you regard as a “Best Ever.” It can be a retired package or something in current use. We're also inviting a few dozen leading direct mail fundraising agencies and freelancers to submit their best performing packages.

E-mail us (editors@theagitator.net) a PDF along with the context or performance results that qualify the package. If you want to share hard data – e.g., dollars raised and or shelf life – terrific. If you prefer instead to say something like “no prospecting piece has ever performed better for our organization” that's cool too. Our readers can judge for themselves.

The Agitator doesn't intend to screen, rank, make awards or critique the submissions. We simply pledge to publish them as we receive them over the coming months. Our goal is simple: provide an easily accessible reference and inspirational library of the best nonprofit fundraising copywriting out there.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Meantime, by all means click here for Denny's story.