Year-End Direct Mail Fundraising: Looking Back To Plan Ahead

For nonprofit fundraisers leading direct mail programs, this time of year presents an exciting range of opportunity. Strategy leaders are looking back on the results from last year’s final campaigns to leverage their data and their most impactful takeaways in new strategies for the next end of year, now just around the corner. Our first Direct Mail Fundraising Strategy Report is here to support those efforts – we’re excited to share a comprehensive review of how current industry challenges, strategies, and creative trends are informing 2024 year-end direct mail campaigns.

In 2023, campaigns mailed in November and December saw ups and downs across the industry – much like we shared in our digital end-of-year report, external influences made this fundraising season more nuanced and complex than we’ve seen in recent years, from the upcoming election to the ongoing humanitarian crises around the world. While results varied greatly from one program to the next, the most significant challenges facing our nonprofit direct mail partners were retention and acquisition. As we dig into these major challenges and explore some of the strategies organizations are building to solve for them, we hope to offer insights and actionable strategies to help you reach your program’s goals in your next major campaigns.

So, without further ado, let’s dive in:

Looking Back: The Takeaways

Crowded mail seasons impact calendars – and postal increases impact budgets.

In the midst of very busy mail seasons like year-end, we see mail slowness from the USPS impact mailings both for outgoing mail and incoming donations. In 2024, we should expect to see this slowness surface again during Q3, when competition from political campaigns and committees mailing in the lead-up to the election will be at its peak. If you’re not already tracking your return mail using IMB codes, right now is the moment to take advantage of this resource.

Lately, we’re also seeing postal increases happening twice per year consistently – with the most recent July 2024 price change, we’ll have seen first-class postage increase by 33% in just two years. Incremental postage rate increases add up to significant impacts on your budget, so it’s important to plan ahead with strategies to work around these challenges: from balancing your budget to identifying the best possible sort level to testing rigorously. This year, it’s more important than ever to improve efficiency by taking advantage of the USPS’ 2024 Promotions & Incentives Programs.

Acquisition challenges at year-end inspire a renewed focus on strategy.

Across the industry, we’re seeing acquisition pose a universal challenge; generally, the ability to effectively acquire new donors has steadily declined. We know this to be a significant challenge to direct mail fundraisers because if your file size is down at year-end, meeting your revenue goals will be all the more difficult. When faced with this challenge, our partners have found success by leaning into alternative and innovative strategies across channels, leveraging key moments to drive acquisition, and placing a stronger emphasis on lapsed donor reinstatement and active donor file retention (more on this third strategy below!).

Make the most of key moments. For some of our partners, taking advantage of moments when current events, breaking news, or important dates put their organization’s mission into the spotlight has been an impactful way to grow their audiences. For one nonprofit partner, putting this strategy into practice at year-end helped them grow their response rate by 11% year over year.

Lean into integrated campaigns. Faced with a tough acquisition market, another nonprofit we partner with looked across channels to drive results. They centered their campaign around an upcoming major milestone for their organization, and this program acquired new leads over digital ads, drove engagement over email, and used their direct mail campaign to deepen their storytelling around the organization’s mission, driving direct mail donors to make a matched gift. This multichannel approach drove a 58% increase in revenue from 2023 to 2024 to help them meet and surpass their goal for the campaign.

Try co-targeting. For other organizations, co-targeting is an acquisition strategy that has helped to increase response: By serving digital ads to your direct mail file, you can increase visibility and brand awareness with your audience, increasing the chance that your campaign will drive a donation.

Planning Forward: The Strategies

Retention: Lean into engagement and stewardship in a tough acquisition market.

As acquisition becomes a greater challenge for nonprofits, the importance of retaining your current donors only grows – once you’ve got them, try not to let them go! We’re working with our partners to make sure we’re leveraging every retention strategy we can to keep donors engaged once they’re acquired:

New donor stewardship: Once a new supporter is acquired, it’s important to make sure their first appeal is something unique or something related to the topic that first brought them in. Thoughtful and specific stewardship can encourage multiyear giving significantly.

Pre-lapsing strategies: Before your donors leave your active donor file, we recommend testing messages at seven, twelve, or eighteen months to make sure these donors know the impact that another gift can make.

Cross-channel engagement: While engagement messages in the mail can be prohibitive for your budget, we recommend looking for opportunities to show your direct mail donors the impact of your work over email, SMS, or web to continue to steward your audience without as much cost.

At year-end, focus creative strategy around results-driving tactics.

While every organization will have their own unique set of creative best practices that they’ve tested into with their audiences, year-end direct mail campaigns that turn to urgency-driving tactics can help bring in responses during a busy and competitive season.

Deadlines
To encourage audiences to make their tax-deductible donations before the end of the calendar year, creative that emphasizes an approaching deadline can drive strong response.

Year-End Challenge Language
Some organizations lean into branded campaigns at year-end and in major moments to encourage their supporters to be part of a broader effort to meet a goal.

Matches
By spotlighting a match opportunity, organizations can encourage donors to take advantage of an opportunity to increase the impact of their gift.

Outer Envelope Teasers
In a very busy mail season, nonprofits expand their creative strategy outside the envelope, including compelling graphics that help entice supporters to open their mail.

Election-year fundraising: Plan ahead, but don’t overthink it.

With 2024 proving to be an unprecedented year for the election news cycle, direct mail programs looking ahead are preparing for an eventful few months. Anticipating competition in the busiest political moments of Q3 and Q4, some organizations decided to frontload their investment in the first half of the year. We’re encouraging our partners to take neither a panicked nor a doom and gloom approach to their election year fundraising strategies – but to consider thoughtful calendaring and a nimble and thoughtful approach to responding to relevant issues when breaking news hits, wherever possible.

At the end of the day, we’ve seen our partners achieve year-over-year growth by consistently leaning into smart strategies and tested approaches, regardless of whether or not it’s an election year – so the most effective way to a successful campaign will be to continue to run your best program.

As we’re preparing for another busy season of year-end direct mail fundraising, we hope you’ll find an opportunity to leverage what’s useful to your unique audience and mission to inform your planning! And – we also hope these insights offer a reminder: Whatever difficulties this year’s fundraising may bring, your donors are out there, and they want to support your world-changing missions to respond to crises around the world, prevent disease, stave off the climate crisis, and make this world healthier, safer, and stronger.

We’re always excited to dig into industry trends and data-driven insights to share how nonprofits are overcoming challenges and expanding the reach of their world-changing programs. If you haven’t already, check out our End-of-Year Digital Fundraising Report from 2023 for more takeaways to inform your strategies. And if you’d like to chat about how these tactics can strengthen or inspire your next campaign, or you have another insight you’d like to share, reach out to us at [email protected].

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