Spring Cleaning for Your Fundraising Campaign: Checklists To Organize an Error-Free Send
With the warmer weather, Spring brings along one commonly shared impulse – to open the windows and get cleaning. While the origins of spring cleaning date back to a range of ancient cultures and traditions, it’s a habit that resonates today. What could be more satisfying as the days get longer than decluttering spaces, dusting in corners, and getting certain overlooked parts of your home a good healthy scrub?
As nonprofit fundraising practitioners, we can understand the value of clean, organized, and streamlined when it comes to executing error-free campaigns across every direct marketing channel. At MissionWired, we have quality assurance teams double- and triple-checking every nook and cranny of every email, mail package, landing page, SMS, and more. Our digital and direct mail QA teams rely on checklists, error trackers, multiplatform preview tools, and more to sweat the small stuff in advance and keep errors from slipping through. Working closely with our partners’ style guides and mandatories lists, we can ensure their preferences for grammar and word usage are always implemented, and a rigorous review and sign-off process keeps us laser-focused on finalizing campaigns as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
If your team is looking for the top quality assurance (QA) checks you can make to keep your email and direct mail campaigns error-free, our team is at the ready to support with the most important tools for the job – the extendable dusters, all-purpose steam cleaners, and pet-grade vacuums of the QA trade, if you will.
If you’re ready to clean up your campaign production processes this spring, read on for the most important actions you can take when reviewing every campaign, from our team of experts:
Effortless Email Execution: Five Checks for an Error-Free Campaign
✓ Check for consistency in calls to action.
If you have a matching gift campaign, are your multipliers consistent throughout the message, on the donation page, and in the graphics?
✓ Preview any messages segmented with custom code.
Do your versions vary language or ask amounts consistently? Do your merge field fallbacks make sense?
✓ Zoom out to look at the full campaign flow.
Are your follow-up messages in line with your original content? Do your automated thank-you emails and linked donation pages reference the correct campaign?
✓ Be sure your signers are consistent across the email.
If you’re using an internal leader or celebrity signer, double-check your sign off matches your email sender and makes sense with your subject line.
✓ Dedicate a separate review of grammatical and factual errors.
And make sure all edits, once identified, are correctly implemented.
Detail-Oriented Direct Mail Processes: Five Checks for an Error-Free Campaign
✓ Review all printing and image details for consistency.
Including colors used and graphic types, special printing techniques, and whether screens, bleeds, or other printing specs are correctly identified.
✓ Ensure copy has been proofread for errors and checked for spelling and grammar.
Bringing in two distinct reviewers for proofreading and spell checking can help eliminate the chance of errors slipping through.
✓ Confirm consistent personalizations in the letter, reply device, and envelope.
Check for salutations and ask amounts, ensure enough area is free for personalization, consider whether personalization will show through the OSE window.
✓ Check that all physical paper components are the proper size and weight.
Is the appropriate paper stock specified? Do inserts fit in reply envelopes? If any perforation will be used, is it correctly specified?
✓ Make sure U.S. Postal Service’s Intelligent Mail barcode is correct.
To prevent costly package issues, we’ll use electronic scanners to ensure these barcodes are correct.
We’re always eager for the chance to talk through how you can ensure your campaigns are seamless across channels. If you’d like to talk more about the production and QA processes for your program, send us a line at [email protected] to keep the conversation going.
To get to know the folks behind our production results, meet our Digital Production and Direct Mail Production teams. And for digital QA tips designed specifically for high-volume moments like end of year, check out our Six Tips for an Error-Free End-of-Year.
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