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Increasing profits is something that everybusiness is looking for, whilst it can sometimes be easy to see how profits canbe increased it is sometimes hard to make that happen. Advertising can play alarge part in the fortunes of a business, but often advertising is veryexpensive and it can sometimes not be quite as cost-effective as planned. Thereare various ways in which a business will try to attract potential customersand sending out various direct mail offers can be one-way that can be verysuccessful. One of the only problems with using this method is that you need tobe sure that you are sending out offers to the right people, so that money isnot wasted on producing and mailing out the different offers.
One way that businesses can do this is byusing a direct mailing list. A direct mailing list is a list of people that abusiness can send mail offers to in the hope that they will respond. Businessescan create their own direct mailing list, but doing so is incrediblytime-consuming and for recently set up businesses this can be virtuallyimpossible as they do not have a data base to work from. Thankfully there arecompanies which hold thousands of different direct mailing lists which can bebought and used by businesses all over the world.
When you buy a direct mailing list you canspecify to the company what type of mailing list you would like. For example ifyou are looking for people who are dog lovers you can ask for a direct mailinglist which has people who fit into this category on it. By doing this you aremaking sure that the direct mailing list that you buy will be most suitable forthe mail out that you intend to send to potential customers. Using a list thatis so targeted means that any mailing that you send out to the people on thelist have a better chance of a response than simply mailing to anyone who is inthe local area or entirely at random.
Many businesses also find that when theybuy a direct mailing list and then get responses from people on that mailinglist they can create their own database. So for many businesses using a directmailing list is just the start of the work that goes towards creating atailor-made mailing list for that business. It may sound like it iscounter-productive to buy a direct mailing list, but in actual fact using sucha list will save a business countless manpower hours which is highly attractiveto a business owner.
Any business that wants to start sendingoffers via the mail should look into purchasing a direct mailing list. Doing sowill help to boost profits in no time and will enable all postal offers to besent to the right type of person first time round, without any hitches andwithout any hassle at all.
You can do this with a survey that you enclose in your mailing. Or you can leave space on the reply device for a few questions. According to Stephen Hitchcock, in his book, Open Immediately! Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising, asking lapsed donors why they are no longer giving will generate some useful answers, and a sizeable percentage of the donors will mail back a gift.
You can use this new information to prevent other donors from lapsing. Review again the reasons that donors stop giving, found earlier in this handbook, to think up the kinds of questions you can ask in your survey to elicit each donor's reason for dropping support.
If you prefer, make the survey entirely qualitative, and ask questions that require original answers and not a simple checking off of a box on the survey form.
Whichever method of survey you employ, use the survey questions to discover the otherwise unknown—why your donors lapsed. Maybe the fault lies with you. Maybe it lies with the donor. Maybe the economy is at fault. You will never know unless you ask.
One advantage of a survey, if worded well, is that the questions themselves inspire the donor again to support your cause. Let's say, for example, that your organization lobbies the federal government to ban handguns. Your donors, even the ones who lapse, are people concerned about handgun violence to some degree. In your survey, you could include questions like these:
1. True of False? An average of five children are killed each day in gun-related accidents and suicides.
2. True of False? 40% of American households with children have guns.
3. True of False? A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting, than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.
As you can imagine, these survey questions are likely to provoke the same anger among decent, concerned lapsed donors that moved them to mail you their first and successive gifts. Survey questions like this prompt lapsed donors to contemplate your work again, thing again about who you help, and ponder the need you meet, and the role that the lapsed donor has in making the world a better place by giving again.
© 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc.