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Fundraising Letters Are Easier To Write With AIDA
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By Alan Sharpe
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Learn a lesson from professional direct mail copywriters. Theyfollow a time-tested format in their sales letters, a formatthat you can also follow when writing direct mail fundraisingletters for your non-for-profit organization. All you need toremember is AIDA.
AIDA is an acrostic for the four things you need to do, and theorder you need to do them in, to write compelling donationrequest letters.
ATTENTION The A stands for Attention. You need to grabit. Your envelope has to grab attention, and the opening line ofyour letter needs to grab attention. Your sole mission at thisstage is to arrest their donor's attention so that they ignorethe television, leave the other mail on the kitchen table, andsit down and read your letter right to the end.
You can arrest attention in a number of ways:
* start with a gripping narrative * ask a provocative question* state a seeming contradiction or paradox * open with ascintillating (and relevant) quote * crack a joke * start withthe word "you"
INTEREST The I in AIDA stands for Interest. Professionaldirect mail copywriters who make their living by selling onpaper know that arresting a reader's attention is not enough.That's just the start. The letter has to immediately stimulatesome interest in the reader so that the reader continues reading.
Plenty of headlines and photographs grab people's attention asthey leaf through newspapers and magazines, but they only readthe stories that interest them. This means that as soon as youhave grabbed your donor's attention, you must follow up withcontent that stimulates interest.
So what interests your donors? Changing the world. Making adifference. Relieving suffering. Saving lives. Transformation.Stimulate interest in your readers by showing why your letterand your message are of interest to them right now.
DESIRE As advertising giant David Ogilvy said, "You can'tbore people into buying your product." Your fundraising appealletter needs to move the heart and mind of each donor. It needsto create in them (or, more accurately, awaken in them), aDesire to respond to the case for support that you present onpaper. One way to awaken this desire is to offer an opportunityfor the donor to make an impact. Show in clear ways how they canpartner with your organization to impact their world for thebetter.
I'll give you an example from a newsletter that I receivedduring the week that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleansand the surrounding area in 2005. This is what the publishersaid in his introductory message:
"I've had the news on all day today as I worked on getting thisissue out. I finally had to turn to a ball game. . . I wasgetting too depressed. It's frustrating to see so many people inneed and not being able to help (at least not right away). Ihope and pray that all our readers in the areas hit by Katrinamade it out okay."
There is a man with a desire. The Category Five hurricanearrested his attention. The devastation kept his interest. Andthe human suffering, played out hourly on his television screen,created in him a deep desire to help. A desire so deep that hegrew depressed because he could not satisfy it.
That's the level of desire that you want to awaken in yourdonor's, except that you want to give them a really easy way tosatisfy it! And that's where the final A in AIDA comes in.
ACTION The A in AIDA stands for Action, or Ask.Professional direct mail copywriters always ask for the order.They want their readers to buy, and buy today. This simply meansthat every fundraising letter you write has to ask for the gift.Informing donors is all very well, but your letter is designedto raise funds. You can ask for the donation in a forceful wayor in a gentle way, but either way you must ask for it.
If you follow these four simple, time-tested steps every timeyou sit down to craft an appeal letter, you will find that yourwriter's block doesn't last as long. And you'll find that yourletters take on a more logical, compelling format, one thatshould increase your response rates.
??2005?Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online andin print provided the links remain live and the content remainsunaltered (including the
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