1 HOUR 3 MINS
Direct Mail Fundraising: From Finding Donors to Keeping Them
The way nonprofits use direct mail is changing. Donor data and automation are making it possible to target the right audiences, coordinate outreach across channels, and use direct mail throughout the donor journey. Explore the state of direct mail fundraising and practical ways to use it as part of your broader fundraising strategy. We’ll look at how donor data, direct mail, and digital channels can work together to keep donors engaged and support your fundraising goals.
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Direct Mail Fundraising: From Finding Donors to Keeping Them Transcript
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All right. Okay, we have some people filing in. We’re going to give that just a few seconds here, really quickly. Those numbers are coming up. All right. So, good afternoon, and welcome to direct mail fundraising in 2026, from finding donors to keeping them, and presenting for us today is Chris Foster. Chris is chief evangelist of Postcard Mania and PCM Integrations, where he advances their mission to help 1 million small businesses grow through education, marketing, and technology. He develops partnerships, webinars, podcasts, and speaking engagements to help business owners, leaders, and marketers become more successful. Moderating hundreds of webcast and podcast episodes, presenting hundreds of webinars, and speaking at dozens of live engagements and panels. Chris is a dynamic educator and presenter who simplifies marketing ideas into plain speak action items, so business owners and marketers can learn how to grow. Now, before I begin, or we begin, I should say, he’s presenting. I have a few housekeeping items to cover. The big question is: Is this being recorded? Are we getting this? And yes, you will. All registrants will receive the the link for the recording later this week. Just to make note, we have Drew Johnson, a donor perfect sales development representative, here to assist with any donor perfect questions that come up that pertain to the topic that Chris is presenting, and lastly, when it comes to questions, please add them to the Q and A section rather than the chat so that they can easily be seen and answered. We should have time towards the end to answer any questions, so make sure that they go into the Q and A so they’re not missed. All right, so welcome, Chris. You are all set to get started.
Well, thank you so much, Laurie. It’s so great to have everybody here today. Nowhere else you would rather be than right here, right now, learning about direct mail fundraising in 2026. My thank you so much to the folks at DonorPerfect for making this happen, and we are ready to go. So I am Chris Foster. I’m your devoted chief evangelist at Postcard Mania, and like she said, I’m advancing our mission to help 1 million small businesses grow through education, marketing, and technology. And small businesses include nonprofits. Most nonprofits are in that small business quote category, so the lessons that we talk about to small businesses directly apply to what you’re doing in the nonprofit space. So we do have a special offer for attendees. What is it? Well, you have to wait because I’m going to show it to you at the end of the broadcast. But it’s an excellent offer that you can all take advantage of. Most importantly, everyone here, donor perfect, postcard mania. We want you to be successful. Period. We want you to be successful in your fundraising efforts. We want you to be successful in your marketing endeavors. You want to feel successful with the marketing outreach that you’re doing, because we know nonprofits have to work with specific budgets. They have to be careful about their spend, and so you want to spend wisely. So we want to help you figure out what the best way is for you to get more funds. Right, your fundraising. Really excited. So that’s why we’re here to help you be more successful. Here’s what we’re going to be learning today. We’re going to understand current donor trends and how different generations engage with direct mail. How to use your CRM data to identify and reach the right audiences with the right actions. That’s what’s key. Knowing your audience is great, but acting on those audiences-that’s even better. Incorporate direct mail into the donor journey from donor acquisition to retention, and we’ll talk about the donor journey. We’re going to talk about all this stuff. We’re going to coordinate direct mail and digital outflow for a more connected fundraising strategy. So your potential donors and your leads and your donors actually are seeing you in the same way across all channels. And lastly, use automation to create consistent donor touchpoints and build long-term donor relationships. That’s what’s happening. We’re going to cover it all now throughout the broadcast. If you do see a screen that you like, please take a screenshot. Please take a photo. Of course, there is a recording, but there might be some things that you just want to capture in the moment. Feel free to do so. All right, let’s raise the roof for not only Giving Tuesday, but for 2027, we’re going to try really quickly to launch a poll. Lori’s got two quick questions that really helps me understand you as our audience. So, Lori, if you want to launch the first poll, a question is: Who do you serve? And this is really to find out where you serve around. The geographic area, right? Local, regional, or national. So, if you could just let let us know who you’re serving, that’d be great. I can’t see how many people are participating. Hopefully, it’s 25% Hopefully, it’s 50% We’re gonna let this poll last for about maybe 45 seconds or so. Maybe we can get two thirds. I don’t know where we are, Lori. If we get the percentage that you know,
we’re at about 71%
71%-that’s awesome. As soon as we hit 75% we can cut it off and we can share great participation. Already, we’re ready. We’re ready to learn today. Let’s go ahead and launch and share that poll. Local, 60% of you are local, that is fantastic. We’ve got some specific local strategies to talk about. 35% region coming in, maybe 20% national. That is excellent information. Thank you so much because the local strategies are going to be very germane. Of course, for regional and national, they also apply. All right, let’s go ahead and close that poll out, and then let’s launch our second poll because I want to understand you in terms of the size. Most nonprofits are might have one person in their marketing organization, two, three to five. The rare ones have six to 10. But I’m curious about this because a lot of folks say, “Gosh, I’m only one. I’m only one person, or I’ve got a part-time hire. I can’t do all of it, but we’ll show you how using automation you can take advantage of the new tools that are available. So let’s go ahead and how are we with participation, Lori? What do we got?
We’re heading upwards. We just hit 66%
Nice two-thirds percentage. Let’s hit 70% I know you can. Just go ahead and drop it in. Takes just a second to drop in. Let us know. That way, as we start talking about it, I can talk either. But you know, the local, regional, national, right? That was 60, 60% 3520, So let’s see if we can get this one. All righty, Lori. Let’s roll it out. Let’s see what we got.
Okay, so that is 75%
Boosh, 75% participation. There we go. No surprise. Half of you, you’re it. You are the marketing person, or your teammate is right. But probably you’re it. The one that’s on two people is good. You know, almost 30% three to 515, and then those rare folks at 4% are the six to 10. That is excellent. The reason that I wanted to know this is that as we start going through these strategies, I can see, you know, what percentage are folks in saying, “Gosh, I’m just a single person. How can I do it all? And that’s what we want to talk about. All right, Lori, let’s close it out and let’s jump in and get going. Okay, gang. The donor landscape is lush. This is a good time. Charitable giving is at an all-time high. The number is ridiculous. What’s most important is the growth. It’s up 4.1 percent. That’s good. That’s good news that it’s in a growth trajectory. Interesting stat: 48 percent of online one-time donor retention. Well, what does that mean? That means about half of the one-time donors came back, and then they made another gift the following year. But what does that really mean? That means that half didn’t, half didn’t come back after they made that one-time donation. We’re going to get to that a little bit later. Now, of course, the golden place is the recurring revenue. Right, 71% of new monthly donors were still actively giving after one year. This is the recurring revenue, and after seven months, 81% were still active. Well, what does this mean for everybody? A one-time gift is not a guarantee for future ongoing donations, but monthly donors are more likely to continue. However, this is an important stat too. Heck, they’re all important stats, but this one in particular, 27% That’s monthly giving as a percentage of all online revenue in 2025. Well, what does this mean? That means most of the online dollars are coming from those non-recurring donors, the one-timers. And what did we see on the previous slide? Half don’t come back, right? So a smaller percentage of the revenue is coming in for those recurring. So you need to nurture those one-time donors again and again until they lock in, because when they lock in, it’s at 71% they’re going to keep active. So it’s a small percentage that that get to that place, but you love it when they do. So it’s going to be important, and we’ll remind you of constantly marketing, even to those one-time donors. All right, let’s talk about direct mail. Of course, direct mail is alive. Look, I know people say is around. A, it’s not dead. B, don’t call it a comeback. I’ve been here for years. Direct mail is fantastic, especially in the nonprofit space. And donors are choosing both digital and direct mail, and are increasingly engaging between those channels. Direct mail revenue grew by 9% and the number of direct mail gifts increased by 4% And for every $1 nonprofits raise online, they raise 66 cents through direct mail. So of course you have to have online. You have to. But direct mail is this massive contributor to raising money, and here’s why: the average direct mail ROI, which is return on investment for an active donor, is $4.51. That means for every dollar you’re spending on an active donor with direct mail, you’re getting $4.51 in active revenue. The average cost is $21 to generate a donation for an active donor. But this is really cool. The average direct mail gift $120, and smaller nonprofits average about 163. What does this mean? It means if your average cost is $21, your average gift is $120. That’s a fantastic return on spend for you using direct mail. Now, why is this the case? Why does direct mail work so well? Well, gang, on average, direct mail stays 17 days in a house. Right? Average number of days a direct mail piece stays in the house is 17 days, and the average number of emails we receive each day compared to mailers is 120 emails to two to four mailers a day. Look, I know you get a ton of email. I know you do. And then when you go through it and you scroll down, even the previous day’s emails, poof, they’re gone.
So direct mail is just a handful that are coming every day, and there’s a 9x response rates versus email or other digital media. So direct mail is still extraordinarily impactful. Now let’s talk about how this applies to generations because I know that when you’re fundraising, you’ve got to take that into account. Now boomers use direct mail to drive the donation. Mailed gifts are still a thing for boomers. They still want to write checks. They still actively respond to the mailing with a gift of their own. For Gen X, it helps drive the decision. Direct mail is going to drive them to the website. They’re going to inform them a little bit more. If it’s a direct mail letter, there’s more information. If it’s a postcard, I get to understand it a little bit and go to the site to learn more, but it helps to move them to a decision-making point. For millennials, it helps drive the journey. Millennials are all in a variety of channels. They’re in TikTok, they’re in Instagram, they’re on Facebook, they’re on the newsletters, they’re on the websites. What direct mail does is insert itself into that donor journey and move them along to the channel of their choice, and of course, for Generation Z, it helps to drive the connection. Generation Z is not about transaction. Generation Z is about relationships. Generation Z is about cause building and identifying with a cause and a cause that they believe in. Direct mail can help drive a connection and a personal relationship that they’re seeking out anyway. And speaking of Gen Z, they want to hear from you. From Give.org, the donor trust report, almost two thirds of Gen Zs want to hear from you. When they did the whole surveys, look at this: 63% I might be willing to give more if approached. I would like charities to approach me more. Right? These are open folks. Gen Z is looking for ways to contribute, and I can do a whole thing. I did a webinar about Generation Z in particular. But when it comes to nonprofits, they lean into causes they care about, and they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. So absolutely, that’s a fantastic target for all of you as you start looking for your next fundraising group. All right, see, we did it. Number one, kicking off we go. Now we’re going to talk about CRM data to identify and reach the right audiences with the right action. You guys with me? We good? All right, let’s move on. I’d like to talk first about what I call funnel fundamentals, and funnel fundamentals are ones where, as you start thinking about segmenting your audience, it’s really important to have this understood. You’ve got to know this before we move forward. So that’s why I’m going to do it as a fundamental. So a funnel, as you know, it’s kind of you know funnel. There’s big at the top and it’s small at the bottom. The same thing is true with your marketing, right? First, the stage is awareness. I’m first introduced to the charity, and this applies to everything that you buy as a consumer. If it’s pickles, if it’s a truck, if it’s a donation to a nonprofit, if it’s a new dress, if it’s a watch, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing, and you as consumers are going through this with every purchase. Sometimes a purchase takes a minute, sometimes it takes months, but they’re going through it when they think of you as a charity. The very first time they’re aware, I’m first introduced to you because I hadn’t been aware of you before. After that, they’re interested. Hmm, I’m intrigued to learn more. I’d like to figure you out a little bit. I mean, I’m going to go to website. I’m going to check you out online. Then I’m consideration. I consider and I build trust. All right, I see your social posts. I see some of these things that you’re doing in the community. I’m going online. I’m checking out your impact. Considering you now, and then of course is the beautiful moment of action where I commit to that one-time give, right? And then there’s loyalty. I commit to repeat. Maybe they set up that monthly recurring revenue, right? And then the beautiful last part is the advocacy.
Maybe the most powerful part, I’m going to tell other folks. I’m going to be this voice that tells other people, “Hey, I just committed to this charity. I love what they’re doing. Let me introduce you to them, right? And then, of course, they create a funnel for the person that they talk to. Of course, they’re moving down the funnel quickly because if they’re a friend, they might be moving in as interested. So, folks, take a screenshot of this, or take a photo of this. I’ll leave it up for just another couple of seconds. This is fundamental. You have to understand this because every potential donor and everyone through the entire lead journey is in one stage of this, not both in one, and they move in a progression to each one. And this is what it looks like: interest, consideration, action, loyalty, and advocacy. So these are the stages of your funnel, and there are signals within each of these segments. Here’s what I mean by that. The first part is interest. Let’s say you put out a social post, and you get some likes, you get some follows. Maybe you get a comment. Maybe someone DMs you, or maybe on TikTok you see that there are some clicks. That’s social engagement. You have visitors to your website. That’s engagement. That’s interest. Maybe they even submit their email. Maybe even submit more information on your form. Well, now they’re really interested. Can then they move to that place of consideration? In consideration, maybe they download a form, maybe they download an impact study or your annual report, maybe they reply to one of your emails, which is beautiful, right? Hey, I got your email. I’m thinking about this, this, this. Maybe they subscribe to your newsletter. Maybe they even call. We love folks who call in, right? Maybe they do, but then they’re moving, identified as someone who’s considering you because they haven’t donated yet. But they’re considering you, and then the beautiful moment, the moment of action, the donation, the gift amount, and the gift date immediately is locked into your database, and from there you can create a donor profile and understand who this donor is, age, gender, all this stuff and information that you can know to better inform you about your donor group. Then, of course, there’s loyalty, and then you start looking at the gift cadence, the gift frequency, the lifetime value, maybe even more gift opportunities that they could be a part of. These are all things where you start segmenting them and saying, “Gosh, I really start can rank. And we’re going to talk about the donor score a little bit later. But you can really understand these folks once they begin this loyalty part of the segmentation. And then, lastly, of course, is advocacy, testimonials, and reviews. All right, see reviews and testimonials. We’re going to get to that and how important that is for you to receive those and to socialize those. All right, so these are the signals of all of your segments, and any action any of this any potential donor or lead takes will fall into one of these segments. Period. So let’s talk first about interest and consideration. You call these folks visitors and leads. These are website visitors and actual leads. Speaking of website visitors, all of you should be considering and thinking about retargeting your website visitor. And I know for the 52% of you that are the single marketing person, this might get overwhelming. It’s possible, believe me. Retargeting visitors that should be a thing that you do on your checkbox. You can retarget them with Facebook. You can retarget them with Google. I’ll talk about how you can retarget them with direct mail. But these are folks who come to your website. They might come from your social posts and then link onto your website, or they visit your website via search or QR code or however that is, and then they leave. All the stats show 98% of people leave a website when they visit, and the retargeting them brings them back, right? So they can come back and maybe then start to really move to that consideration phase. So I want to talk about consideration a little bit more deeply. These are the folks is what we would call a qualified lead, right?
If I just maybe submit my email and then I don’t open it, and I’m part of the 70% that don’t open the emails, ah, it’s okay. But if they reply to your email, if they download something, if they subscribe, if they call, they do some action that shows that they’re considering you. That is a qualified lead, and oh man, those are your beautiful, precious, qualified leads. You have to take care of them. So these qualified leads need special treatment, right? So let’s say it’s a download or a subscribe or an email reply or something like that. Set up a progression of touch points and messages that a tell your story and. Have a call to action, and we call that a CTA in marketing speak, a call to action, and lead that prospective donor towards the act of giving. Right, and you start putting messages in their mind, and the other message you want to put in is it gives you the chance to prepare the mindset of that donor for recurring giving. So all of your messaging going out saying thank you so much for your interest. It’d be so great to have you as part of the family. What we do matters. What you do matters to our group. And boy, wouldn’t it be great if it was recurring? Because I guarantee you spend more than $20 a month on Starbucks. Couldn’t you spend $10 a month on this or $20 a month? Right. So try to put that mindset of recurring giving because we’ve just shown in the earlier part of the slides that that 71% of the folks who give are active givers, so it gives you the chance to put that in their mind and plant that seed for them to say don’t just give once, give every month. So this is what an example could look like let’s say there’s a newsletter subscriber, they put in their email and say, yeah, I’d like to look at this news. I’d like to see what you got. Five minutes, you need to send them a text. Thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter. It’s awesome to have you as part of our family. Can’t wait to tell you about all the great stories and all the social impact that we have for your community, right? Because about 60% of you were local. Addressing that local community is really important, especially nowadays. We’re thinking local. 15 minutes later, program an email to go. Hey, thanks so much for, you know, you know, signing up for the newsletter. We really appreciate it. You’re going to get your next newsletter in X number of days or however, and so much packed with information. If you have any questions, if you want to think about recurring donations, talk to us. We’d love to talk to you, and then of course you set up the newsletter cadence. Now, in that newsletter cadence, you want to have a really good call to action. That’s what we talked about a couple slides ago. A CTA, something for them to do that moves them along the customer journey. Maybe it’s an impact study, right? All the things you’re doing in the community to impact, you know, your local neighborhoods, and once they say bong,
gish,
it sets up a whole new segment. Anyone who downloaded that impact study is now in a new segment. It’s the impact study downloaders, like it’s a special club, right? It’s their own group. Again, five minutes, send them a text, send them an email. 15 minutes later, three days, send them another email. Seven days, send them an email and text. 10 days, send them an automated postcard. We’ll talk about that in a bit. 15 days, again, 30 days. The idea is that automation software now helps you plan these touch points so that your impact study downloaders, as a lead segment group, is treated differently than your newsletter subscribers. Right? You don’t want to mail a postcard to your newsletter subscribers because there’s postage. It’s relatively expensive. But if someone downloads an impact study, well, gang, they’re so much closer to that precious moment of being a donor. Yes, it’s worth it to send a little bit of extra juice to those folks, right? A little bit of extra touch to make sure that they can move to finally becoming a donor, right? Create outflow to your leads continuously. And people say, “How long should I follow up with my leads, I say forever, forever, right? Because they signed up, they’re interested, and you can segment based on engagement, like I just showed you, newsletter or download, and have that call to action that moves them to the next level of engagement. And please, please don’t stop marketing to leads until they either unsubscribe, because they maybe they unsubscribe. Okay, that’s fine. Or they become donors. Stick with them. A rule of thumb, which is in consumer marketing, blah blah blah, is that 95% of folks are not in market, and only 5% of people are actually in market at any given time. My hunch is that it probably applies to nonprofits, but you can imagine someone’s busy; they’re doing stuff. I got to pick my kids up. I got to go to soccer. I got to clean the cat poop. I got to do stuff. So they might not respond all the time, but you have to keep in front of them until they’re ready to respond. Don’t stop marketing to leads until they unsubscribe or they become donors. Copy paste. Take a shot. Take a screenshot. Send it to your exec director. That’s a key learning that I hope you take away from this, because one day, if you keep working at them, boom, they become donors. Finally, the magic worked. You’ve brought them in, and now what’s beautiful about a donor is that you can segment those folks based on their donor activity. Now, this is a marketer’s dreamland, and it’s an automation dreamland. Again, for the folks who are one person or two people, don’t get overwhelmed because automation can help you with this. But the thinking that goes into segmenting your donors will really set you up for success. Forward, start simple, and then you move along. So you got a first-time donor. Woohoo! Got it. All right. Appreciate them with a thank you, an update, an impact report, stories of change, the founder’s mission, whatever that is. Welcome them in. Welcome them into the family because you know, like I said in the very beginning, more than half aren’t going to come back, so you got to make sure. Hey, we are so glad you’re here. This is awesome. Welcome in. This is great. And then you want to move them to that recurring donor, like we talked about. Maybe this is exclusive content. Maybe it’s a special invitation. Maybe it’s a thank you. You nurture these folks. You take care of them because you want them to really feel like they’re part of the club, and then finally, of course, you hope for those increasing donors, right? Maybe you reserve a special gift like a tote or a mug, or invitations or Zoom meetings. You celebrate these folks. I’ll give you a great example. I am a member, proud member of Classical California, KUSC, and they have. I am five five bucks to 10 bucks a month, and and I get special stuff when I move up to $10 a month. I get a little mug, but I got an invitation via Zoom for all the $10 a month donors. We got invited to a special Zoom chat with Classical KUSC so we could listen and talk to the hosts.
It was awesome, right? So small little things that you can do to kind of show the inner workings of what you’re doing makes them feel special. Makes me feel special, even though it’s only 10 bucks a month. I’m a recurring donor, but they made something special for me, right? So segment your donors and start treating them differently and market to them differently, so you’ve got tons of data that’s available to you as soon as they donate. Right? They’ve got a gift amount. They’ve got a date. Maybe there’s a lead source. You create that profile. There’s a cadence. Hopefully, maybe it’s once a year, twice a year, once a quarter. Of course, the beautiful moment of once a month. There’s a lifetime value, which means how long are they donating for the entirety of their life? And my hunch is you already have this data either in your CRM or an Excel spreadsheet, or exported to an Excel spreadsheet, where you can see on average my donor is $575 over the life of their engagement with us. Okay, and they usually last about two and a half years before they fall off. Okay, that’s a really important number for you to know because if you know what that lifetime value is, you have a better understanding of how much you’re willing to pay to get a new donor, right? So imagine this. Imagine you have what I’d call this back-to-schoolers group, right? And that way you can run a query or look in your database. If the gift date is between January or July 1st and September 30th, I’m going to schedule three emails and one letter in May and June, right? Because I know that they should be donating in this time. I’m going to say, “Hey, last year you donated. Are we ready to do this again? I hope you’re having a great summer. If there’s no gift by those folks by August 15th, send another email reminder. If there’s no gift by September, man, send a postcard and an email because you you want the want to get this person back. Remember when we saw earlier $4.51 is the average return on investment for direct mail. Send them a direct mail, right? Because their gift is going to be higher. If there’s no gift by 915, send a letter and an email. Go after them. But what you can do is this is an easy thing all of you can do, even in Excel, even if you’re the one-person marketing team. Sort by date, and then after you have this group, like your back-to-schoolers group, plan activity before and plan activity after if they don’t donate. Makes sense. Are we good? All right, we’re moving along. And there’s an awesome tool in DonorPerfect, and Drew can tell you all about it if you have questions at the end. This is DonorPerfect’s donor score. It’s found in the constituents list. It scores and ranks your donors. It’s an awesome place to go, so you can figure out how to actually segment your best donor. So that’s a tool available for you in the fantastic DonorPerfect platform. Okay, look at this! Woohoo! We are on a roll. Look at that. All right, now we’re going to talk about incorporating direct mail into the donor journey from acquisition to retention. We good, good. All right. I think we’re all hanging in. Yeah. All right. So let’s talk about direct mail to all parts of the funnel. I’m sure all of you took screenshots or photos or copied down what the funnel was. Right. That awareness, that interest, that consideration, that action, that loyalty, the advocacy. All of that is the funnel? You can apply direct mail to all of it. That is the one cool thing that’s been happening over the last several years. Is direct mail is really advanced, and it can get very particular to these various segments. So let’s talk about awareness. This is mailing to potential donors to match a donor profile. Find out who. Actually, is really donating with you. Well, gang, find more people like them. Find more people like your best donors, right? Because they’re more likely to donate. So, let’s say we have a segment we call Young and Upward. This is Emma Schilling. She’s 27 years old. She’s married. Household income greater than 150k. Home values greater than 600k. Zip code 80126.
This is in beautiful Highlands Ranch, outside of Denver. You can use the donor perfect donor score. Kind of found a constituent list to find the top ranked donors and or get this donor profile by appending data such as lifestyle and interest records, political affiliation, etc. All this stuff is available for you to understand, Emma Shillings, because you want more Emma Shillings, right? That’s the thing. She’s a fantastic donor. You want more Emmas out there. Well, out of this, you can get this mailing list, and I ran the count. I just went in and said, okay, how you know with this various criteria for how many Emmas are there out there, right? And approximately 500 to 2000 are available in these three zip codes. Right, it’s around this Highlands Ranch, Denver area. Mountain biking, charitable nation, arts and culture, pet owner, things like that. That is a fantastic list. Why? Because she looks like my young and upward. It looks like my Emma Schilling. Right, I’ve got a bunch of Emma Shillings out there, and it’s not a huge list, but that’s okay because 60% of you are local. This is a local list. This is beautiful, right? It’s a it’s a nice small tight list that you can target for a long time now. That you have this group that you can market to. So this is how to get new donors from a targeted perspective. You can also get new donors locally. This is an example. This is Goodwill Tallahassee. They mailed 6000 cards in an eight and a half miles around from their location, doing a grand reopening. I guarantee you that this is what I would call an awareness strategy because there’s no way some home is going to say, “Oh, I hear the Goodwill’s opened again. How would they know? They wouldn’t. There’s no way they could possibly know that this opened until they get a postcard, right? They might have seen. They’re going to get the postcard, and suddenly they’re aware. They’re like, “Oh, this is awesome, awesome! Right? They found they they saw a 70% increase in revenue with this grand opening on this Goodwill store, right? So local marketing is fantastic when it comes to direct mail because you can target specific neighborhoods and specific types of people. Cool. All right, all right. So that’s awareness. Ching. Now let’s talk about interest. This is to retarget website visitors with direct mail. You might not have heard of this, so let me talk about it. You can reach visitors who have expressed an interest clearly going to your website, but have not donested, donested, donated, or filled out a form. Look at that! Come on, Foster. Apologize for the typo, you guys. But that way, you know that I’m not AI, Right. So, for direct mail retargeting, prospective donors visit your website. We can match anonymous visitors to mail addresses and then mail postcards out the next day every single day. I guarantee you’re getting website traffic. You’re probably getting website traffic right now. Don’t look. Pay attention to the webinar, please. But I guarantee you’re probably getting traffic right now, and you’re going to use retargeting with Google. You’re going to do retargeting with Facebook. You can retarget with direct mail too. It’s fantastic. It gets incredible response rates. But it’s a way for you to retarget those website visitors and move folks from just kind of aware and interested, and move them to consideration. You put a beautiful QR code, a great storyline, a great message. Get them back to the website and move them along. So that’s boosh, interest. Now let’s talk about consideration. This is the lead follow up. You’ve got leads. Personalize it. You got stuff. You’ve got a database, even if it’s a Excel sheet. Personalize it, right? So this is Capo’s Corner, right? It’s a community of cat protectors. They are able to, you know, older cats find a home, right? But you personalize this. Put their name on it. Every everyone’s favorite word is their name, so that way you can actually look at your own database and set up a personalized mailing and personalized outreach to these leads through that consideration phase. Right?
We talked earlier about the ones where the example is the impact study downloaders, where you can add a direct mail to that because you know they’re further along, so you can spend a little bit more money to move them along. Send the postcard using these personalized follow-ups because they want to hear from you because they’re already interested. So that’s consideration. Action. It’s a thank you card. Gang. All human beings approach. Thank you cards. Enough said. Period. We all do. Please, when someone does a donation, come on, send them a thank you card. Text, email. I’m sorry, that’s too boring. Come on, send them a thank you card. Send them a personalized thank you card, Janine. Thank you for the donation. You’ve made a positive difference in the lives of our Philae and friends. Thank you for joining the community of cat protectors. Send a card. It’s so easy to do it, and it’s so easy to personalize it because you want to make sure that one-time donor comes back. Remember, over half won’t donate online again. You got to change that average. Send them a thank you card. Period. Enough said. That’s action. And finally, loyalty. These are the reminders. These are triggered by dates. This is so important. Remind one-time donors of their commitment. I just mentioned it. I’ll mention it again. You got to get them to commit to the monthly recurring revenue. Move them along. Those one-time donors. Hey, Janine, can I count on you for a donation? You made a positive difference in the lives of our feline friends. Will you continue to be a part of the community of cat protectors? Donate again, right? Make sure that you’re marketing to them again from the beginning of this of the presentation, $4.51 is the ROI for direct mail to active donors. They’re worth a postcard, right? It’s a $1 postcard. Absolutely worth it to send to those one time donors to make sure that they come back again. Give now, save cats. Just saying, and there you have it, right? There you have it. Direct mail to all parts of the funnel, right? All those areas you can apply direct mail. Ding number three off the books. We are rolling, doing great on time. Now let’s talk about coordinating direct mail and digital outflow for more connected fundraising strategy. We all still with me, right? We’re all good, excellent, fantastic. Here we go, gang. Marketing automation makes lots of outflow possible. I’m gonna stress outflow. So outflow is the stuff that you’re putting out, social, TikTok, email, direct mail. Maybe it’s a billboard. Could be, right? All the outflow that you’re doing, both to people who don’t know about you, your leads, and your donors. All this stuff is outflow, right? Marketing automation makes lots of outflow possible, right? So here’s what you want to do: plan your tracks of outflow. You can do this on a calendar as a piece of paper, and then list your marketing channels: direct mail, social media, pay per click, and display ads. Let’s just say that’s a thing, right? October, November. Okay, I’ve got a calendar. I’ve got my channels. Geesh, social media, pay-per-click display ads. I’m going to start running these both both months. I’m going to do a 60-day push on this, meaning that I’m just going to schedule my posts. I’m going to have this display ad set up. I’m going to do a pay-per-click ad, and then goosh, I’m going to launch direct mail in these parts, right? So suddenly, if you look at this as an overlay, you’re like, “Hey, I got two months of direct marketing outflow right here. All I did was put it on the calendar, right? This is the entirety of two months. It looks like a lot, but suddenly, simply, you’ve created Outflow for two months to generate traffic into your site and engaging with your nonprofit. And a pro tip: use the same image, design, colors, headline for the digital and direct mail design. You don’t have to get cute. Use the same image you saw earlier. I used Janine and her cat for the same image. Uh huh. Use that for your digital too, right? It’s the same stuff. That way, anyone receiving that says, “Ah, familiar, familiar, familiar, familiar. I know who this person is. I know who this nonprofit is because it’s the same image and same message.
They’re not going to get tired of it, even if you are. So just repeat that design, colors, and headline for both channels. And as a note, quick note on what we do at Postcard Mania, we offer a service called Everywhere Small Business, where we do all of this for you in one complete bundle. More on that a little bit later at the end of the show. Okay, other tracks of outflows, what I’d call in your content calendar. So these are blog articles that you would write, Facebook and Instagram, which is Meta, those are the posts or the e-newsletters that I’m sure you all have. And if you don’t have e-newsletters, just do a newsletter. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Put your blog articles out there. Blog articles are critical because oftentimes they’re picked up by search, and the online searches they might not pick your website up, but they will pick your blog post up. So, or schedule your blog posts. And a pro tip, gang, it is okay to use your AI helper to craft rough drafts of your blogs and your posts and your newsletters. It’s okay. This is where AI can be your friend. ChatGPT or Claude or even probably Gemini. You can get them to help you draft these things and say this is my message. This is what I want to do. Make it a blog and a post and newsletter article. It’ll do it for you. Now you have to edit and refine. Can’t just copy and paste. But this will help you, especially if you’re the 50% that’s the marketing team of one, or that 30% that’s the marketing team of two. Use AI to help you. It’ll craft your meta posts too, and just schedule them and launch them. You can because once you have the content, you can just push them out, and then you also schedule your newsletter and check this out. Look at this outflow. Suddenly, on top of what we did for display and direct mail, you have all of this outflow for content for the next couple of months, right? All right. Lead and donor nurturing. Again, you’ve got a newsletter, phone calls and texts, emails, and automated direct mail. Again, that newsletter is still going out to those folks. Now, with phone calls and texts, the pro tip is to have a sequence for your phone calls. Make sure you’re not telling everything all the time in single call or an email, move them along to say I want to move you to this next stage of engagement to consistently follow up with those leads and donors. Schedule it day one, day five, day 10, day 15, day 25, and you’re like, Oh Foster, isn’t it too much? If it’s too much, they’ll unsubscribe. But again, those leads have a lot of other things to do than give to you, and you have to make sure that you’re top of mind so they come back and give them that compelling reason to come back to your site, that compelling storyline why they should be active with you. So you have to keep in touch with them, and you’ll also add automated direct mail to this. Real quick about automated direct mail. Our Smart Touch automated direct mail at Postcard Mania and PCM Integrations. You can launch personalized direct mail as easy as sending email. Set up two to three mailers, put them in a drip campaign, and easy peasy way to go. We’ll talk about that at the end. But that is a way to do the automated direct mail. And lastly, we’ll talk about planning tracks of outflow. This is reviews and results, Google reviews and testimonials. This is key for you because folks need to know that they can trust you. The Give.org donor trust said 68% requires that trust. Does trust come from you? Pounding your chest about how great you are and what the impact you’re having may be, but does trust come from their friend or other people that they would consider listening to? 100% people trust other people, right? So, you have your Google reviews and your testimonial, gang. It’s so easy. Pro tip: just ask. Just ask. You can even send them a postcard, like I showed earlier. Ask them to leave a review. Ask them for donations. Ask them to tell other people about you.
60% of donors seek ratings, reviews, recommendations, and research before donating. This is in that consideration phase, right? This is why I lay those that funnel out for you. Anyone who’s considering you, they’ve moved past interest. They’re considering you. They’re going to look at your reviews. So make sure that you ask and get them, and post them, and socialize those reviews and testimonials. Woohoo! Look at this. We are rolling. We’re on to number five. You guys are all hanging with me, right? This is excellent. Okay, we’re going to talk about using automation to create consistent donor touchpoints and build long-term donor relationships. Well, the good news, folks, is that technology is on your side. It’s true. It’s not on their side. It’s on your side. Donor perfect for your donor management, constant contact, email, and social campaigns, and PCM integrations for automated direct mail. So, 50% of you are one marketing person. 30% of you are two marketing people, right? That’s 80% Two or one. You need the technology, but it’s on your side. It’s been built for smaller teams to do real first-class marketing using the tech that’s available on these platforms, right? So I’m going to show you an example. I’m going to walk through this a little bit more slowly. Don’t get overwhelmed because again the tech is on your side, so let’s say you have a lead segment one. We talked about lead segments, right? We’re good, okay. And let’s say this lead segment you call they download the annual report, right? These are the downloaders. The next thing you want to do with them if they’ve downloaded the annual report, well, they want to know. Your financials. They want to know your activity. They want to know your impact because that’s the financial. That’s the annual report. That’s a big deal. So gang, get them to sign up for your gala, right? That’s your call to action. 60% of your nonprofits are local. You might have a gala. If they download the annual report, that’s a big fat signal that they’re keen and they want to learn more. So send them to the gala, right? That’s a gala sign up. So you’re going to start touching them five days, 1520, 3045, 90, right? Because you’re going to keep in touch with those leads until they become donors, right? Right. And then on day 20, pooh, the magic moment happens. This person signs up for the gala. Well, gang, guess what? You’ve got another lead segment. You’ve got a totally different segment now. Five days, 10 days, 15 days, 20 days. Because they’ve signed up for the gala doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to go. You want to make sure they go, and maybe they want to donate ahead of time, or they want to maybe be a gift or sponsor a gift back or something. But just make sure you keep in touch so they show up for the gala, not just sign up, but that they show up. So this is how you can create this segment and market to them, and you can do this with you know email and direct mail and text and the like, right? And then suddenly I’ve got this other segment, right? Oh, Foster, you’re blowing me out because it’s you know $10 a month. The CTA is $20 a month. Again, move them along to that new segment. Another maybe is the Gala Check Writers, right? Which is an awesome segment, but you want them to be a sponsor. Okay, move them along into a sponsor. Suddenly, you have all of these segments that you can start marketing to, which means you never stop marketing. You always have someone to reach out to and market to and move them to the next level of engagement. Always, you always have folks within your database that are a lead or a donor that you can segment and move up. And this seems overwhelming when you look at it like this, but if I take this back, I’m like, yeah, I could probably do that. And you know what you can do then? You can clone various workflows in those automated platforms. I’m going to apply it to this one. I’m going to apply it to this one. So it’s possible, very possible. It just takes a little bit of work and understanding of those automated platforms and the thinking of laying this out.
Hopefully, you’re taking a screenshot of this because here’s an idea for how you can segment your stuff. I’ll leave this up for a little bit. Take a screenshot, take a photo, but these are ways in which you can get really quote unquote sophisticated marketing activity simply by segmenting your audience, having a specific call to action, and moving them through automation, and gang, the technology is on your side, the automations on your side, DonorPerfect Constant Contact, PCM integrations. These are great collaborators with you and technologies to help you take advantage of those segments so you can market properly to each one. All right, we got a handful of minutes. I’m going to get on a soapbox. More outflow, please. More outflow. Invest into outflow marketing to drive more inflow. Right, outflow is the only thing that’s going to bring them in. I’m going to show this graph to you very quickly. Seasonal spikes of activity is in gray. Steady growth is in pink, because what happens in the world of marketing, whether it’s consumer, business, or nonprofit, is that there’s lag time. You send a mailing out, there’s lag time for the response. You send a post out, there’s lag time. There’s always going to be lag time if you fluctuate in your outflow and the volume of your outflow, your investment feels like marketing doesn’t work, and then your exec director says, “We’re going to cut down on our marketing budget. It’s not working, and then you go to a downward spiral because you’re like, “How come we aren’t getting more donations and leads? It’s because we’re not marketing enough, right? It’s it’s a it’s a, it’s a tale from time immemorial, right? So, consistent investment feels like your marketing is working, and the numbers prove it because the lag time is there, but you keep on adding flow and volume to drive more inflow. Okay, look, we did it. We used automation to create consistent donor touchpoints to build long-term donor relationships. We got all five things done. I know someone were like, Foster, that’s a lot of slides. I don’t know if we can get it all done, but gang, we got it done. And how? With time for questions. Because look, we want you to be successful, and we’ve got time to talk with you about the questions you have on all the great material that I just shared with you. A little bit about DonorPerfect, right? Award-winning fundraising software platform for nonprofits, built for every stage of growth, any size organization, stronger relationships and results, where nonprofits raise 25% more. Funds in their first year can’t be beat. 32% higher average gift size, 24% donor conversion rate. Come on, DonorPerfect is absolutely where it’s at. About Postgard Mania is the number one direct marketing platform for small businesses, including nonprofits. Technology plus personal service. It’s a complete solution. We’ve got a ton of reps here, ready to talk with you. 1000s of case studies in all industries, and a variety of products and services to fit any business type. We’ve got a full suite for you. We’ve got, of course, the targeted direct mail, the everywhere small business that I mentioned. It integrates the Google and Facebook CTV and YouTube ads. New to town, which is new mover and homeowners. It’s perfect for all of you local nonprofits to get people who are moving in to get that in front of them and get them engaged with you. Website to mailbox is the direct mail retargeting, PCM integrations. That’s that driven CRM-driven automated direct mail, and of course we also do websites and landing pages. If you need a refresher, we do the full digital services: SEM, SEO, PPC, and now we even added AI search as well. So we do websites for you, PCM integrations. This is the automated side of the house. Design templates. You can upload files, upload lists, set up drip sequences, one-offs, and workflows. Postcards and letters. Type demo in the chat. That way we can connect you immediately, or you can scan that QR code and get to our landing page. Two brands, one solution: the full direct marketing platform, and then the automated direct mail platform as well. Again, type demo in chat or scan that QR code to enter your information, so we can get in touch with you.
Lastly, we’ve got a devoted team of about 400 employees based here in Clearwater, Florida. All all of our services are in house, and we also have a fantastic podcast. It’s the Everywhere Small Business Podcast. Real stories, real people. Learn from other folks. I know we’re in a nonprofit space, but you can learn from other folks. And actually, for anyone wondering what the letters say behind me, Yes, that is the Everywhere Small Business Podcast. This is the studio. Hell, and a special offer. Let’s go. Let’s do it. 1000 postcards. 1000 postcards on us on your first Everywhere Small Business campaign. So go back to this QR code or the text. I’m going to go right here. Go back to that QR code. Log in there, and you’ll be able to qualify for that 1,000 free postcards for the Everywhere Small Business Campaign. Right, so we can help you with that outflow that integrates digital and direct mail. All right, Drew’s on the line from DonorPerfect. I’m on the line. Questions on this or other marketing? I am ready to serve you, Lori.
We do have some questions, and I am not sure I answered one fully. Drew’s been answering a lot of questions coming in. He’s actually typing an answer now. Mitchell asked. He said, “Does DonorPerfect manage design slash printing slash stuffing slash mailing slash response tracking for mailed solicitations for which donations may be received by check or via PayPal slash Venmo.
Well, DonorPerfect does. I don’t think DonorPerfect does that, but Postcard Mania certainly does 100% So we do all of that design. We do all the printing in house. We do all the mailing in house. We work with you specifically to create the campaign. So I will go back to the QR code bonk bonk scan that QR code and please put your email in and that way we can get you started with the direct mail campaign. We do it all.
So question I’m going to add on to that because they do have the ability out of DonorPerfect to export a list of who they want to receive specific mailings.
Perfect.
When they do that, they can actually set up a mailing code, which you would then use somehow in what you’re mailing out. They and when people respond to that, they the mailing code becomes the solicitation. So that’s where the matchup is, so that they can keep track of who’s been mailed along with the responses that they’re receiving, so I’m hoping that’s a more thorough answer for Mitchell as we go through that. Okay. Does Postcard Mania have nonprofit rates?
Yes, 100% All nonprofit mail. Once you have that nonprofit indicia, we mail with nonprofit postage rates.
Okay. Let’s see what else we have. Oh wait, did he answer that? We did have one that was early on asking where your targeted list came from.
Oh, so well. That example was just a just an example, but targeted lists are coming from our own list sources. So if you have a description of your target audience, so for example, my description of Emma Schilling had parameters. She was married. She’s age 3525, to 35, with this income, this household income, this home value, etc. We can get that list for you specifically to various zip codes and the like. So we do that as part of our own full service direct mail.
Okay, and let me see. Not sure if this qualifies, but somebody asked if a thank you card is better than the old-fashioned thank you letter on stationery.
Oh, great question! Thank you card, thank you letter-it doesn’t really matter. But the fact that you get something in the mail, a thank you letter is perfect as well. The postage might be a little bit more than a postcard, and it might not be as visual because you don’t have maybe a signature or an image. Are people going to keep a thank you letter? Probably about as much time as they’re going to keep a postcard, right? I mean, you don’t keep a thank you letter around. So either one works. The other way to do it, you guys, which is a wonderful, beautiful four-letter word, T E S T test, right? If you’ve got a one-time donor and you have a bunch of one-time donors, and you say, “I’m going to take those. I’ve got a lot of these 20-dollar one-time donors. I’m going to send half of them a postcard. I’m going to send half of them a thank you letter, and see what happens. Maybe nothing, right? Maybe there’s no difference at all. Maybe there is a difference. You don’t know until you test. But a thank you letter or a thank you postcard, either one, sending out a piece of direct mail to thank for a donation. Like I said, everyone likes getting them.
Okay. One of the things that you mentioned was, you know, giving them a call to action, something like downloading an impact report, something along those lines, which led to a slew of questions on. So, if that resides on my website without connection to DonorPerfect, how are they getting that information on who downloaded the report into DonorPerfect?
That is a great question. That’s probably going to be on the DonorPerfect side for Drew, but I would imagine that if they’re able to get that data and put that into donor perfect as to who is actually donated, whether you have CSV files that you can upload with various flags, that would be something on the donor perfect side that they’ll provide a better answer.
Okay, let me see what else we had here. Okay, so a few people were putting demo into the Q and A, but we do have some in the chat, so I’ll be able to share those with you.
Perfect.
Afterwards, does the direct mail service by Postcard Mania operate in Canada as well.
We can mail to Canada. There’s some as there’s some things that we have to do specifically for Canada, but that’s something that we can talk. You can talk with one of our marketing consultants about that. So go ahead and fill your name out in the email based on that QR code, and that way they can talk to you about mailing into Canada. It’s it’s different than mailing in domestic U.S.
Okay, because we do have mailing into Canada is one thing, but we do have clients that reside in Canada, and I’m wondering if they’re if if you mean the same thing by mailing into Canada, but they do reside in Canada, so that’s where they’re.
Yeah. So if they’re in Canada and mailing to the U.S. that’s just a U.S. permit that we normally use. But if they’re in Canada mailing to Canada, that’s a separate issue.
Okay. I believe I’m going to guess that that is their question because they may reside there. Okay. More demo. Somebody asked if you’re buying the lists.
Um. Well, what we do is we we do get the list for you, and then as a nonprofit, you can have a one-time mailing or a year-long license for that data. So we we use a variety of list brokers, channels, and resources to get the list for you.
Okay. So, but for the most part, they’re able to provide you.
Oh, if they have a list, they can provide a list. 100% If they if they have a list, they can send us the list, and we can mail to that list 100% If they want us to get a list for them and acquire a list, we can do that as well.
Okay. Yeah. What more questions about this? Website visitor stuff that we will hash out later. I feel like Drew’s answering all of them, but at some point we’ll have to do a like a something in our blog, a blanket type of mention about it somehow, so that we get the response to people who are looking for it because they they seem very interested, but they want to make sure that they have those processes down instead of kind of you know this was a lot to take in, so it was a lot of guessing right now with how do I do this type of thing. So and we can take care of that later. Do you use recycled or sustainable paper?
We can absolutely, and you know, we we also source our paper from sustainable sources as well.
Okay, I’m just checking. I um, there’s nothing left in the Q and A. I just wanted to check the chat real quick, and that was the one question that came through. But I don’t see, I don’t see anything else. That’s let me see. Okay, so I’m gonna ask this because I have a feeling it would end up being upvoted. Would you ever sell a list that a client provides you?
No, never. Okay. No, never, ever, ever, ever. We never do that, ever.
Okay. All right, and that was the final question that we had. Looks like we got through all of that.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. If you have any questions at all in the chat, may I chat everyone?
Yes. Just make sure you select it from the drop down.
Uh huh.
I just put in my email, folks, Chris Foster at Postcardmania.com, and you know, would love to if you have any questions at all, would love to talk with you.
Okay. And actually, would have asked for it anyway. Look at this.
This is my thank you. There you go. There you
go. Okay. All right. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today. A big thank you to Chris for sharing all of these great insights and ideas. We hope you’re leaving with a few new ways to think about direct mail and how it can work alongside your other fundraising efforts. So thank you again for joining us. I know it takes a you know, it takes away from a lot of other work that you’re doing, but we’re glad that you’re here, and we do hope to see you in some future DonorPerfect webinars.
Thank you so much, Lori, and and and thank you to you, to Caitlin, to Drew, to Eric, to Daryl, to everyone on the DonorPerfect team for having us. We really appreciate
it. Oh, this was great. I I myself learned so much. So oh,
wonderful. That’s good to hear. Thank you so much.
Okay, thank you.
Bye bye.
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