[Melissa Siobhan]

Can those of you involved in your donor renewal appeal letters please let me know the following (or please aks the person who does this in your organization and reply for them):

1) Do each of your donor renewal appeal letters in a year (spring, summer, fall, winter) have the same look (size and deisgn) or do you vary the package with each mailing?

2) If you converted from one process to another (same look to varied look or the other way around) what was your reasoning behind the change and what has been the result?

3) How many donors are you mailing to in each renewal appeal and how does this impact the stategy you choose in your look?

Thanks for your help!

P.S. Not a lot of postings today - everyone recovering from Halloween?

[Anne Marie]

I do not do the appeals etc, so I don't know how much help I'll be.

1)The design of the package is basically the same, but the text and content changes depending on an issue or or topic we'd like to highlight.

If the donors are "lapsed" (haven't given in a few years) they are sent a package that prospects would get to try to encourage them to come back.

2) We have kept this format for awhile as it seem to work. Although by altering the text of the appeal letter and various graphics or photos, the packages do not appear to be the same old thing. Plus it is less costly than re-designing a completely new format with every mailing.

3) We're a small outfit, so we would send only a few thousand in each mailing.

[Richard White]

We don't have cyclical appeals if that's what you mean. We send out a lot of mail appeals, for example five just in November, so we're always trying to re-motivate our donors, even if sometimes just getting in touch with them by sending them some relevant information.

We send out anywhere from 150 to 2000 pieces in different mailings. We have marketing and development staff (writers/graphic artists) who create many of our mailings in-house. We also use a couple of outside mailing houses for large jobs or complicated printing. The appeals run from simple letters on letterhead to glossy, 4-color appeals with collateral materials in unified color schemes.

[Faith D]

While our donor renewal program is in a bit of a transition phase, our renewals have largely had the same look and feel in the last year. In other words, a one or two page letter on letterhead, a printed envelope (no window) and a reply envelope and reply device. We have changed the letter from mailing to mailing, but not hugely.

We're mailing between 800 and 1,500 each time, so it's hard to get a solid statistical evaluation of differences in performance that correlate to differences in package or letter.

Over the years, though, we find that a plain package and a high level of personalization performs best for us both in acquisition and renewals.

Hope that helps!

[cseebald]

1) Appeals are designed for the fiscal year. So, each appeal within one fiscal year will be similar, but the appeals for the next fiscal year would be different. The difference is mainly in the look of the brochure/insert and the text of the letter - but the text for the letters for each package is also slightly different (see #3 below).

2) The look when I first began at Houghton (in 1998) was fairly humdrum, with a similar letter sent each time - there was little variation and no brochure. The new look has helped increase the donor base and foster renewed interest.

3) Typical mailings are 10,000 to 14,000 per appeal (at least 4 in each fiscal year) with anywhere from 12 to 15 packages. The letter for each package is "personalized" for that group (e.g. current donors, alums within reunion years, parents, lapsed donors, etc.).

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