The donor hasn't given in 9 years -- should you keep trying?

I want to show you a smart piece of fundraising I got in the mail recently from Feeding America.

First the envelope:

This is a smart envelope. I don't know what DONOR CONFIRMATION ENCLOSED means, and that's its power. (Also, the organization that sent it is not identified in any way -- there's only a PO Box address on the back flap.

Because it incites curiosity, it likely gets a good open rate. (Wouldn't it be cool if we could measure the open rate of direct mail the way we can for email?

But here's where it gets interesting:

This, along with a return envelope, is the entire contents of the pack.

As you can see in the box on the lower panel, I am a deeply lapsed donor to this organization -- nearly nine years. The amount of my last gift (which I've crossed out to protect my meagre privacy) was enough to put me in a mid-value donor category.

For reasons of my own, I stopped giving to this organization. They have no idea why, and really no way to find out, short of asking me directly. But they want me (and my mid-value potential) back!

For most donors, it would be crazy to keep mailing someone as deeply lapsed as I am. The response rate will be abysmal -- probably lower than 0.2%. A crazy waste of money.

But if the donor's last gift is high enough, all the math changes. Because the small number of those donors who do reactivate at a very high average gift. And be more likely than average to upgrade. Suddenly that terrible response rate doesn't look so bad!

Two more things I want to point out about this pack:

1. It has a good offer -- a match that will "TRIPLE your impact". Smart move, as a match dependably works better than the same pack without a match.
2. The pack is dirt cheap. That's not always a smart tactic, but in this case it might be -- over-spending on an audience as cold as I am can quickly undermine the feasibility of the project.

Winning back a deeply lapsed mid-value donor is worth a little extra work!

You can discover many smart ways to maximize your direct mail fundraising by taking my 4-part online Moceanic course, 7 Steps to Creating Record-Smashing Direct Mail!

Register before tomorrow, Friday (February 9) and get $100 OFF. I hope you can be there.

from Future Fundraising Now http://ift.tt/2Ers3ob