You¡¯ll be encouraged to know that the art of writing effective fundraising letters can be learned. I learned it. So can you.

Successful fundraising letters share a number of things in common. Once you know what these things are, your letter ...

Are you willing to spend $1.25 to raise $1? To lose money to make money? You should be. Most donor acquisition mailings never pay for themselves. They lose money. And rightly so.

Acquisition letters (letters designed to acquire new donors) ...

Thank-you letters are one of the most important letters that your non-profit mails to donors. They remind donors that they made the right decision in supporting your organization. They show that you are grateful for the donors gift. As a bonus, th ...

Direct marketing is built on four things. The other way to look at it is that when you think direct marketing is not working only one of four things can be wrong. Let¡¯s look at each.

1. The Target ¨C This is who you are sending your marketing ...

Every business needs customers, but more importantly every business needs to maintain those customers while constantly retaining new ones. The only successful way of doing this is by learning everything about your customers, including who they are ...

A person or business that might buy from you is called a prospect. But they might just as accurately be called a skeptic. We live in the age of the spam filter. And call-display. We live in what fellow-copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis calls, ¡°The ...

Conventional wisdom says that the front of a direct mail postcard is for the picture and the back is for the address, stamp and a short message.

But some savvy direct marketers design their postcards the other way around¡ªand boost response r ...

1. Address your reader as a friend, not as ¡°Friend.¡±

When was the last time you received a letter from someone dear to you, addressing you as ¡°Dear Friend?¡± Never, right? The days of the Dear Friend letter are dead. I heard ...

The toughest job you face as a B2B direct marketer is reaching your prospect with your message. Reaching C-level executives is particularly difficult because they employ mailroom staff and executive secretaries who screen their mail, or your mail, ...

Here is an example of a business-to-business sales letter mailed to auto dealers by a firm that markets gift cards that replace paper gift certificates. Anything in brackets [like this] did not appear in the letter but simply appears to describe t ...

Used the right way and with the right audience, postcards often outperform their mailbox ¡°competitors¡± in money saved and revenue generated (the competitors are sales letters, self-mailers, unaddressed flyers, dimensional mailers and catalogs). He ...

1. Mail to a different list
\rYour list is the most important part of your direct mail campaign. Who you mail to is more important than what you mail. So if you are persuaded that your offer is attractive, your creative is comp ...

This really and truly is the easiest (and most profitable) small business direct marketing tip you¡¯ll ever get. \rAnd when I say easy¡­ I really mean EASY.

It¡¯s a no-brainer.

Once I tell you what it is you¡¯re probably going to say, ¡°Oh ...

1. Your Most Valuable Asset

A mailing list of valued customers is the single most important asset you have. Loyal customers will spend an average of five times more in your business than new customers. Plus it costs ten times more to acqui ...

Market research specialists have discovered a new tool which enables them to quickly identify target market cells, measure buyer acceptance, test new product or service concepts quickly and inexpensively and survey market characteristics...the Dir ...