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Gearing up for the busiest time of year…

If you are like almost all non-profit organizations, most of your donations are contributed during November and December. It’s a known fact that people are more inclined to contribute during this period, so it’s best to plan now for the holiday mailing in late November.

DonorPerfect provides many ways to select and target this mailing. Mailing to your entire list, while touching everyone and spreading your mission, is probably not a good return on your investment.

Typically, it’s best to focus on those donors that have given recently, three years or less, for the basis of your mailing. Secondly, you should further target your mailings and ask the right amount. If you outsource your holiday mailing, most mailhouses will ask you for the average, maximum, and most recent gift amount in the mailing list you supply so that they can calculate the new ‘ask’ or ‘upgrade’ amount automatically.

If you are doing the mailing yourself, you can still use this information that is in your DonorPerfect system. For example, whenever you export donors from DonorPerfect, you can always include these calculated fields (Average amount, maximum, most recent, etc.) in your copy/mail merge to make sure you are getting the maximum value out of your mailing.

For those that are even more sophisticated, DonorPerfect can completely segment your list based on the classic Recency, Frequency, and Amount mail segment criteria (Popularly known as RFA or RFM). To access these Mail Plans, click on Mailings, Direct MailPlans.

Finally, you should make sure your mailing list is CASS certified and also checked against the National Change of Address (NCOA) list. You’ll never receive donations from mail that is undelivered, and in any given year, about 1/7th of the US population changes addresses. We provide both of these services- click here to learn more about NCOA/CASS.

Our support department would be happy to walk you through the many ways of getting the most out of your holiday mailing, so don’t be afraid to give us a call!

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