Direct marketing: start with what you know

Over the course of my marketing career, there’s a trend that’s never stopped: data about prospects has gotten easier to obtain and easier to analyze. Segmentation and targeting that were difficult and expensive to do in the past have become cheaper and easier for organizations of all sizes. And what’s most interesting about this is that still, lots of organizations don’t use this data to market more effectively.

A while back, I made a donation to the American Diabetes Association. I did this because I know that diabetes is a serious health problem (though not one that’s affect me or anybody close to me) and because a friend was participating in a fundraiser and asked for sponsors.

It doesn’t surprise me that I got another solicitation from them; I expected that. What did surprise me was how poorly conceived it was, almost as if it was intended to fail. (Which it did.)

(Now, before I go on, I want to be very clear about something: my comments about this mailing should not be seen as a criticism of the ADA’s mission or goals. I don’t know much about them, but I don’t want to discourage anybody who supports them from ceasing to do so. What I do want to do is point out an excellent example of mistakes you should avoid in your own direct marketing.)

Here are some things that the ADA knows about me (and everyone other first-time donor from that fundraiser), without doing any fancy data analysis:

• I’d never given money before, but I was willing to when a friend asked.
• I might have no personal interest in what they do. My donation might have been just supporting a friend. Or perhaps I was recently affected by diabetes, personally or in my family, and the fundraiser came at the right time. And maybe I’d just decided to up my charitable giving, and would be willing to give more. In my case it was the first reason, but no matter which applied, asking me if I’d make another contribution is reasonable.
• It’s not safe to assume I know anything about them, as this was my first donation and came in because a specific personal appeal from a friend.

With all that in mind, it’s just amazing to me that I got this in the mail:

Does anything here speak to the situation I described? The first thing on the page is “Membership Dues Notice.” Huh? I’m not a member. I’ve never been one, and have no interest in becoming one. Why are they asking me for dues? This is like getting one of those fake bills for domain name hosting.

Then there’s a list of all the benefits I’ll get for $12; but none of these mean anything to me. I’ve never asked for them or used them before. A subscription to a magazine I don’t read? Discounts on supplies I don’t buy? The ability to look at a web site (gee, that’s hard to come by)? Why should I care about any of this?

There’s no reason for me to, of course. It looks like my name has just been tossed onto some house list.

Now, imagine if they had sent something like this to all the people who gave sponsored someone in that fundraiser and who were new donors:

Dear John,

Thanks for supporting Pat in the recent Big Old ADA Fundraiser. Donations from friends and family are a tremendous help in our ongoing efforts to fight diabetes, which is now [insert a compelling statistic about the impact of diabetes here].

This year, our works will include…. [insert list of important initiatives].

That’s why we’d like to ask you to consider extending your support with another donation….

And so on.

All that copy does is take what they already know about a specific group of donors and make an appeal that has some hope of being relevant. It supports the appeal by explaining why the donation is important and how it will be used. Ideally it would be part of a discrete, limited campaign - maybe a couple of letters - to identify the donors who will give again. (Some of them never will, of course, and once the campaign has run, it’s appropriate to stop spending money to reach them.)

And this doesn’t even require any kind of hardcore data analysis, just the very basic step of thinking, “Who are these people on this new list of names? Now that they’ve given once, how can we find the ones who are willing to give again?”

If I saw this kind of mailer from a charity that was something close to my heart, I’d think, “Why are they throwing away money on this?”

If you’re not doing some kind of segmentation in your direct marketing now, you are almost certainly throwing away money - and potential income. This doesn’t require extensive investments in software or data analysis; if you’re doing nothing, just do some very basic cuts at your database and start tailoring messages to the different groups. If you’re a small business, it can be as simple as dividing the list into new contacts, good repeat customers, and occasional customers and speaking to them all appropriately.

It takes some work, but it’s never been easier; there’s no reason to be making mistakes like the letter above.

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