Direct mail is a powerful communicate method that allow nonprofits with your audience. Direct market postcards provide you a way to convey a precise message to people who are interested in hearing it.

#1 Have Different Postcards for Current & Prospective Donors

You should not be sending out the same mailer to prospective donors and to active donors. Anyone who has donated to your cause has already shown not only are they interested in your cause, they are willing to engage and give money to the cause. Prospective donors are individuals who have shown interest in your cause but have not made the commitment to donate yet. The marketing needs and messages for current donors and prospective donors should be different.

With current donors, you are giving them a reason to reinvest and with prospective donors, you are building up interest and getting them to trust your nonprofit so they can someday be turned into active donors. Each of these two different audiences deserves a message that is catered directly to them. Catering your message based on donor engagement and giving will help you further increase donor engagement and giving.

#2 Mix-Up Asks & Information

People gave you their address and information because they want to know more about your nonprofit, not because they want to be hit up for a donation every month. If you only ever send out postcards that ask for donations, you are going to disconnect from your audience and not build the engagement you want.

Make sure you are sending out informative messages. Perhaps you ditch the postcard and send out a newsletter once a quarter. Around the holidays, send out holiday greetings.

You want to use your mailing list to keep donors informed and to help you get donations. These two elements go hand-in-hand; informed donors are going to be more inclined to donate.

#3 Test Out Your Postcards

Before you send out a postcard to your entire list, test it out. For example, if you want to send out postcards to 200,000 people, test it out and send out postcards first to 10,000 people on that list that are randomly selected. Then, measure the level of response and engagement you get from your target group. If you don't get the level of engagement you want, you can re-craft your message and run another test before fully launching your campaign.

Direct mail marketing efforts for donations for your nonprofit can be effective if you target active donors and potential donors with different messages. Make sure you test out messages before sending them to a large grouper. Take the time to build relationships; don't just ask for money with every communication.

For more information about postcard marketing for nonprofit organizations, reach out to a marketing firm near you.

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