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Direct MailTechniques to make your direct mail letters raise more money

There are three myths about direct mailfundraising ...

1. Fundraising is begging2. You can do it too often3. People don't read long letters

Fundraising isn't begging. Standing onthe sidewalk and harassing people for money isbegging. Fundraising is the act of describingsomething that needs to be done, saying howmuch it costs, and asking people if they valuethe proposed project enough to help pay for it.If they don't value it, they won't give. If theydo, they will. It's just like any other economicexchange. People won't pay for what they don'twant, In addition, direct mail is passive. Peopleget to decide, in the comfort of their own home,whether or not they want to give. No one isstanding over them with a gun. If you aren'tdoing direct mail fundraising then you shouldbe. You have projects you want to do that otherpeople will also want to see done. Give them thechance to help.

Only the market can determine whetheror not you are asking for money too often. Ifyou start to raise less and less money from eachappeal, then you're asking for money too often.If you're raising more and more money with eachappeal, then maybe you should try asking moreoften. If the amount of money you raise is fairlyconsistent, then you're probably asking formoney just about the right amount of times.

The Republicans mail fundraising letters to

their members 52 times a year. That's once aweek. They wouldn't be doing that if it wasn'tprofitable, and people wouldn't be givingenough to make it profitable unless they weregeting personal satisfaction from it. The na-tional LP mails fundraising letters about once amonth. We would do it more often if we hadmore immediate ability to effect public policy asthe Republicans can. And as we gain thatability, you can bet that we'll start to mail moreoften, as the market dictates.

Personal opinions about how short orlong a letter has to be in order for people toread it are worthless. What matters is what themarket tells us. And the market says long letterstend to work better. This has been confirmed byso many split-list tests that, as a general propo-sition, it's no longer even debated. However, it'simportant to understand some of the reasonswhy longer letters tend to do better. To under-stand this, we have to understand the differentkinds of people who read direct mail.

There are four types of people who readdirect mail ...

1. Those who don't read it at all, but throwit right in the trash.

2. Those who read just the beginning andthe ending of a letter.

3. Those who skim the highlights.4. Those who read the entire letter.

• For people who throw direct mail in the trashthe length of a letter doesn't matter, because

they're not going to read it anyway.

• For those who read just the beginning and theend, the length of the letter doesn't matter,because they're only reading the beginningand the end, so the number of pages inbetween is irrelevant.

• For those who just skim the highlights, themore highlights you have, the more opportuni-ties you provide to either close the sale on thebasis of your highlighted points, or to con-vince them to sit down and read the letter as awhole.

• And for those who are so interested in yourorganization that they will read the letter as awhole, the more sales points you can make,the more likely you are to convince them togive. Therefore, your letter should be as longas is required to include every positive salespoint that you can think of.

There are two types of direct mailletters ...

1. Fundraising2. Prospecting

A fundraising letter is any letter that ismailed to people who have already qiven youmoney in the past. It's almost impossible to losemoney on a mailing of this kind.

A prospecting letter is any letter that ismailed to people who have never given youmoney before. It's almost impossible to makemoney on this kind of letter. Prospecting lettersare valuable only in terms of the future incomeyou will receive from any new contributors todiscover.

Good prospecting letters are much harderto write than good fundraising letters. Doing sowill be beyond the ability of most local organi-zations until they are large enough to hireprofessional copy writers. However, the sugges-

tions made below will allow you to write a goodfundraising letter.

There are two cornerstones to a goodfundraising letter ...

1. The unique sales proposition (USP)2. The complete sales argument

Before you start to write a fundraisingletter, you should try to figure out what it isabout the project you will be proposing that willbe uniquely valuable to your contributors. Thisunique selling proposition will provide thesubstance for your appeal.

The second thing you should try to do isfigure out all of the questions and concerns thatcontributors might have about your project. Thiswill allow you to construct a complete salesargument. It is the number and nature of theconcerns and questions you will have to addressthat will tend to make your letter longer ratherthan shorter.

A good fundraising letter has five parts.

1. Progress2. Plans (or the project description)3. The request for money4. The reminder5. The postscripts

It's very important to build continuitybetween your fundraising letters. You want theletter you write this month to refer to the letteryou wrote last month, and point to the letteryou plan to write next month. You do this byusing a "plans and progress" approach.

You begin by reporting the progress youhave made with regard to the plans you de-scribed last month.

You continue by explaining how thatprogress relates to the plans (projects) you aregoing to talk about this month. ~

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Then you describe your plan, and addressall anticipated concerns and questions.

Then you describe how much the project isgoing to cost and ask for the money to pay forit. The best way to ask for money is to list awhole series of contribution amounts, from highto low, so that the reader will be able to see thatthe amount they have in mind will be of valueto the project. This has been tested over andover again - if you don't list a series ofamounts then the reader wonders whether theamount they have in mind will really help, andthey tend to not give.

After you've asked for the money youremind them about what you've accomplished inthe past due to their support and express thehope that they will be able to help you again, sothat you can take the next step forward. Thenyou thank them and sign the letter.

Then you include two PS's. The PS's are forthe people who tend only to read the beginningand the end of a direct mail letter. Therefore,you will want to try to recapitulate your salesargument, in miniature and, if possible, do it insuch a way that they are teased to go back andread the letter as a whole. In the second PS, youwill want to remind them of your deadline inorder to create a sense of urgency that theyshould send their check right away. This is alsothe point at which you remind them about any"premiums" you may be offering, and tell themthat they will be sent just as soon as you gettheir contribution.

A note on premiums: You will want to keepthe total cost of fulfilling a premium to 6% ofthe gift that is required to receive that pre-mium. By far the best kind of premium is whatis called an "identity" premium, which is any-thing which serves to make the contributor feelgood about having contributed. A good exampleof this would be to put their name on a plaquethat will be displayed either in your headquar-ters, if you have one, or at your public meetings.

In addition, there are nine techniquesthat will enhance the readability of yourletter ...

1 . Invincible questions2. Bulleted items3. Foreshadowing (or teasing)4. Short paragraphs5. Broken paragraphs and broken sentences6. "Stopped" sentences7. Widows8 Contractions9. Cliches

You want to begin the letter with some-thing that draws the reader in, and makes themwant to read further. Invincible questions aregood for this purpose. An invincible question isany rhetorical question which you can becertain your reader will answer in a positive way,and which will tend to excite their curiosityabout the contents of the letter. The invinciblequestion will tend to foreshadow your uniqueselling proposition.

A good second step is to then list all ofyour recent progress, using quick bulleted items,and, while doing so, foreshadow, or tease aboutyour project, or unique selling proposition: Thisshould be easy, since at least some of yourprogress will have set the stage, in some sense,for what you want to propose.

Example

• Since we last wrote to you we have ten differ-ent info booths and collected over 100 namesof new prospects. Keep reading and I'll tell youwhat we're going to do with these prospects.

Then, when you get to the part of theletter where you want to describe your project,it might look like this ...

• Remember those prospects I told you about atthe beginning of the letter? Welt we'd likeyour help in recruiting them as members ofthe party. To do that we're going to hold an

"Introduction to Libertarianism" at the Holi-day Inn on Beale Street.

When you have laid out the basic skeletonof your letter - your progress, your plans, yourrequest for money, your reminder, and yourpostscripts - you will then go back and work toenhance the readability of your letter stillfurther.

• You will add more bulleted items where pos-sible.

• You will add more foreshadowing and teasingwhere possible.

• You will make sure that most or all of yourparagraphs take up no more than three lineseach.

• You will make sure you have a line of whitespace in between paragraphs.

• If you need to break paragraphs in two in orderto keep them to three lines you will do so.

• In order to heighten tension you will want tocreate unnatural breaks in your longer para-graphs, so that your last sentence ends withan ellipses ...

... so that the sentence contin-ues after a line of white spaceand centered the way this one is(the centered text containing thesignificant part of the sentence).

This is a form of highlight, sothat important points don't getlost in the blur of words, andyour skimmers can pick them outfrom the rest of the text.

• You will then look for sentences that you canshorten or break into two. There is a tech-nique used by novelists that can be of helphere. It's caned creating a sentence with an

"artificial stop" in it. For instance ...

The man walked into the room. (You nowknow that a man has walked into a room, butyou're led to wonder why.)

He walked over to the table and picked upthe gun that was lying there. (You know thatthere's a gun, but you don't know why, andyou're led to keep reading).

He looked at the gun for a moment andthen put it to his head. (The tension is built upslowly but surely, so that you have more andmore information, but are left with questions.Each "stopped" sentence answers a previousquestion and then asks another - why is theman putting the gun to his head?)

• Next, you will make sure than no page of yourletter ends with a finished thought. You willcreate "widows" (sentences that are continuedon the next page) to make sure that the readerhas to turn the page in order to get thecompleted thought.

• Finally, you will go back through your letterand use contractions wherever possible. Can't,instead of cannot. This will make the lettermore friendly and personal. You will not, not,not worry overly much about grammar, be-cause you want your letter to sound likespoken speech. But you do, do, do want yourwriting to be clear, clear, clear.

• Do not be afraid of using cliches. Cliches areuniversally understood, and can communicateyour point much quicker than long exposi-tions. Your letter should be built for speed.

[By Perry Willis]