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Fundraising Tuesday: 5 Reasons You Must Personalize Your Appeal Letters

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Too Busy for Wheels

Let’s talk about why to segment your mailing list and personalize your appeal letters…even if think you don’t have the time.

Right now, are you sending out the same appeal letters to loyal long-time donors and new prospects? To retirees and college graduates starting their careers? What about people who volunteer at your events and people who show up occasionally?

Do you know whether the person receiving the letter cares about your youth program or your elder services? And do you know enough about them to call them by name?

Nonprofits, we need to send different letters to different audiences--and personalize every one of them. Here are the top five reasons why. Click To Tweet
  1. The personal approach will make more money. People who feel they are making a difference give more than people who feel they’re part of a nameless, faceless crowd.
  2. Personalization will get more donors to renew. It costs seven times as much to acquire a new donor as it does to treat a current donor well enough that they renew their gift for another year. It’s worth it!
  3. It’s the Golden Rule. Do you like reading a letter that starts “Dear Friend” and goes on to ignore the issue that made you support your favorite cause in the first place? If you don’t, why would other donors?
  4. You must be at least as personal as a for-profit business. If my health insurance company can send me a message tailored to me–and I HAVE to buy health insurance–what can I expect from a nonprofit I donate to voluntarily? Surely, you should show you care!
  5. It’s 2018. Everywhere your donors go online, they see content tailored just for them. That might be welcome. It might be a little creepy. Either way, it’s what they expect. Fall short of that expectation in print, and they may never read the letter you worked so hard to write.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Ways to Get Personal with Your Donors

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personalOne of the seven reasons your nonprofit is not raising as much money as you want is that you’re not making those appeal letters personal.

Making it personal means more than sending out a mass mailing that calls donors by their names. If you’re not doing that already, please start! “Dear Friend” letters are the clearest signal that the person receiving the letter is not really your friend.

But mail merge is old hat. It doesn’t make anyone feel that you, the nonprofit, know anything about them, the donor. There are better ways to tell the donor “You’re my hero.”

Make It Personal by Sending the Right Letter

The donor wants you to know whether or not they have ever given before. If you don’t know that, you don’t know them. If you don’t know them, why should they give?

Send a different letter to previous donors than people you're asking to give for the first time. Click To Tweet

Simple, right? But in my personal experience, nine out of ten appeal letters used exactly the same language to me that they would use to someone who had never given them a penny!

Fix this by segmenting your list, writing different letters to prospects, lapsed donors, and renewing donors, and acknowledging the date and amount of the previous gift.

Make It Personal by Talking about MY Issues

Let’s say you run a community center. I came to an event where you highlighted your youth programs, and I was so impressed that I donated on the spot.

At the end of the year, you sent me an appeal letter, and it talked all about your Meals on Wheels program for seniors. It said nothing about youth.

What are the chances you’re going to get a donation from me again? Slim and none.

Appeal to people based on the things you do that actually appeal to THEM. Click To Tweet

With a good database, you should have no trouble keeping track of my giving history and my attendance at events. With the right tools, you can even tell which of your emails I opened, showing what topics I was interested in. (And you can tell a lot about me just by listening.)

Write Me a Personal Note

It used to be a no-brainer for Executive Directors, Development Directors, or Board members who knew the donor to write a personal note on appeal letters.

People, we are going in the wrong direction on this! 90 out of 106 letters arrived in my mailbox with no personal touches whatever–even when my wife and I have known the person sending the letter for many years.

Fix this by composing your appeals long enough in advance to add those personal notes…and doing so. It will pay you back in donations, this year and for many years to come.

TY Thursday: Post-Donation Thank-You–on Your Website!

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post-donation TY pageCongratulations! You’ve cultivated your donor, and she has just gone online and made a generous gift. Now, post-donation, you want to thank her as personally as possible, as soon as possible.

But how?

Your First Chance to Show the Love

Just because a donor has made a gift to your organization, it doesn’t mean you have won their heart. Not forever. Maybe not even for today.

You’ve heard of “buyer’s remorse”? That feeling  you get when you’ve finally plunked down your credit card or signed on the dotted line and agreed to a purchase…and then you say, “Wait a minute, did I just make a big mistake?”

Donors to nonprofits go through that too. They give on impulse, and then they wonder, “Did I really do the right thing? Is that nonprofit really what I want to be supporting with my hard-earned money?”

The moment they give, you want to send them a message that says, “Yes! You did the right thing.”

Your Website Can Be Your Thank-You

All online fundraising tools will let you send a receipt to your donor automatically, to let them know their donation actually went through. But that’s the equivalent of the cashier handing you a receipt after a purchase. It’s minimal and impersonal. Your nonprofit can do better than that!

Some tools will let you customize the receipt. If yours allows you, definitely say “Thank you, Dennis, for giving $100 to Social Justice Organization. You’re already helping to save the world in this way!”

Some tools, like PayPal, won’t.

But–PayPal will let you return the donor to your website after he or she makes a donation. So, why not set up a post-donation thank-you page that shares all the love with the donor, right there on your website?

11 Things You Can Do on Your Post-Donation Thank-You Page

The thank-you page on your website can give your donors more than just a verbal “thank-you.” Here are 11 things you can do there to give the donor the feeling, “I made the right choice when I gave to this organization.” (The first nine are from Joanne Fritz  and the last two from Tina Jepson of Causevox.)

  1. Invite donors to follow you on social media. 
  2. Invite donors to watch a video.
  3. Invite donors to volunteer.
  4. Gather info with a little survey.  Ask just two or three questions on the thank you page, such as how they found out about your charity, why they donated, and how they want you to communicate with them.
  5. Connect your donor with resources.
  6. Gather feedback.  Explain to your donor that you always want to improve your service and ask her to help by leaving feedback about the donation process itself.
  7. Provide testimonials from the people you serve.  There’s no better way to reassure the donor that his decision to give was a good one than by listing a couple of testimonials from the people you help.
  8. Invite donors to something special.
  9. Remind your donor of an additional way to give (as charity: water does in the thank-you page pictured above).
  10. Add an email newsletter subscription option.
  11. Highlight impact.  By closing the loop on the donation, you ensure that your donor knows that your organization is making a difference because of their investment in your cause.

It doesn’t take any more technical knowledge to set up a post-donation thank-you page than to add any other page to your website. So, why not give it a try? See if your donors appreciate it!

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