Anatomy of a Direct Mail Makeover: Lessons from Cal

This is the fifth in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

This week I have chronicled the story of how Cal’s fundraisers took a new approach to turning alumni into annual donors by creating a graphic-driven, audience-directed, full-color brochure. While the results of the direct mail campaign aren’t in yet, I believe you can still pull several lessons from their experience.

1) Connect with your audience’s memories and emotions. A large group of alumni has never responded positively to Cal’s annual appeals. Instead of continuing to send them more of the same kind of mail that didn’t work, hoping that the alumni would change their minds, Cal conducted focus groups. They honed in on some themes they heard directly from those alumni, and worked with those concepts, even though they weren’t all necessarily positive (e.g., Cal is big, impersonal place.)

2) Try something new and test it. This is the first time Cal has produced a brochure as bold as this one. But rather than sending it out in the world all alone to see how it performs, they also wrote a traditional business letter using the same theme. This split-testing will tell them much more about the success of the brochure than if they had sent it out alone.

3) Let your ideas evolve. Cal started with a cookie cutter theme based on focus groups. But it simply didn’t work. Rather than abandoning the concept completely or sticking with it simply because the focus groups had used that terminology, the fundraising team let the idea evolve into one that worked. I compare it to kneading bread dough until it is smooth and shiny. I have a folder on my computer labeled still cooking for article ideas that aren’t quite ready for publication. I’ve found that it takes at least three iterations from the original concept before the images and text of an idea really gel. (Enough cooking metaphors; you get the idea.)

4) Let the graphics talk. The Cal piece works graphically because it appeals to our natural curiosity, but still provides enough clues that we don’t stray too far away. Take the Trendsetters tagline, with the Rolling Stone cover of Bono. Now, I know Bono didn’t go to Cal, so I’m thinking, “What’s the connection? Let me read this small type down here.” Turns out Jann Wenner, ‘67, is the cofounder and publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine and upon closer inspection of the image, I see that he wrote the cover story on Bono. (I personally think that using the Bono cover is also a subliminal message since he is now one of the faces of modern philanthropy, but Cal says that’s not the primary reason why they chose it.)

5) Use “You” Without Being So Obvious. The first drafts were full of “you” statements –“you this, you that” and they were too presumptuous. While I am completely on the “You” bandwagon for nonprofit marketing, especially donor communications, some people are taking it too far. I believe smart donors can see through it, and once everyone employs this technique, the effectiveness of that single word alone will dim. What will not fade, however, is the power of more creative, sophisticated messages that are built off the concept of “You, the donor” without overdoing it.

I hope you enjoyed the series this week. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment on any of the installments.

Special thanks to Amy Cranch and Virginia Gray of Cal for their detailed, honest accounts of the process!

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Anatomy of a Direct Mail Makeover: Connect with Donors

This is the fourth in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | This is Part 4 | Part 5

The direct mail makeover by Cal fundraisers highlights the cultural contributions of alumni and asks other alumni to support the next generation of innovators, while also thanking the graduates “for being who you are.”

The brilliance of this approach is not in its originality – it rarely is. Using famous alumni is not new. Asking alumni to support future generations is not new. And yet it works beautifully. What is new is the twist on these concepts. What’s new is the juxtaposition of meaningful cultural icons that came out of Cal alumni and inviting other alumni to think of themselves as peers to those innovators.

I’m one of those slightly disaffected Cal alums who Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, is trying to squeeze some bucks out of. I enjoyed my time there and appreciate the education I received, but I feel no special connection to any particular people or places on the campus. But this piece grabbed me.

Rather than talking about all the Nobel Laureates and other Big Brains who went to Cal, the piece talks about their impacts in images and words that are relevant to me, right now. A computer mouse. Saving the planet through energy efficiency. MySpace. Apple, Inc. Dilbert. Bono on the cover of Rolling Stone. This piece of mail takes an education at Cal that happened decades ago and makes it meaningful to my life today. It makes it incredibly easy for me to see how my contribution will lead to the next great thing I’ll have on my desk tomorrow.

Remember: They started with a cookie cutter. “We tried it one way, and it didn’t work out, but we kept going. The new idea was really good, and the copywriting and graphics told a great story,” says Virginia.

I admit, my interest in this piece was piqued first by professional curiosity. When I saw the big, yellow “You” on the cover panel after getting years of canned letters from Cal, my first thought was, “OK, somebody just took some donor marketing training and has gulped down a big cup of the ‘You-Not-Us’ Kool-Aid.” But when I opened it up and read the piece, I immediately felt like I was part of this amazing group of innovators simply by virtue of being an alumna. Check one slacker alumna off your list, Virginia. I gave online for the first time since I graduated in ’91.

Virginia is new to nonprofit marketing, but she has a strong direct marketing and branding background and knows the importance of finding emotional hooks. Her focus groups told her what she already knew. Cal is huge and there are not a lot of common experiences there that create unifying emotions in alumni. But those same alumni also told her what their hot buttons were — that they weren’t cookie-cutter Ivy League graduates and yet were proud to have graduated from one of the top universities in the nation.

Did it work on other alumni as well as it did with me? We’ll see. The mailing list includes 100,000 graduates of Cal’s College of Letters & Science who are not currently donors. The list was not broken out by age or other demographics. Half got the full-color brochure and the other half got a standard business letter with similar messaging in much longer text and no graphics. See the Brochure. See the Letter.

Virginia says it takes a good two-three months before they can judge the performance of a direct mail campaign, but she will pull the first numbers at the end of November and has agreed to share them with us. By split testing similar messages in drastically different formats and comparing them to other campaigns, she hopes to determine what was more important to success: the message, the package, or both.

We’ll find out in a few weeks. Stay tuned by subscribing to this blog right now (see upper left of blog home page), so you don’t miss the results!

Coming Tomorrow: Lessons you can learn from what Cal did

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Anatomy of a Direct Mail Makeover: Design to Engage

This is the third in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | This is Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The creative team has gone back to the drawing board. Gone are the cookie cutter imagery and the direct language about “you, a Cal alumni” being innovative, creative, etc. Instead, the team creates a piece that finally works: On the cover, it asks, “Who are you? Cal alumni are . . .” The “you” is in big, bright yellow letters, standing out against a black background. As you open the piece and unfold it, you see a series of panels:

Movement Leaders & Story Weavers
Creators & Innovators
Educators & Crusaders
Trendsetters & Friend Seekers
Activists & Satirists

Each tag includes a clear simple image with a small blurb about an alum who exemplifies that description. With Movement Leaders, you see a bunch of asparagus, and “Alice Waters, ’67. Acclaimed chef and pioneer behind the worldwide movement to eat local, organic foods.”

With Friend Seekers, you see a screenshot of Tom’s MySpace page with 201,904,463 friends. It says “Tom Anderson, ’98. Cofounder and president of MySpace.com and first friend to every user.”

The ten images represent a great diversity in alumni in age, gender, ethnicity, and subject area. They are chefs, writers, teachers, scientists, programmers, inventers, cartoonists, and athletes who have all had a profound impact on today’s culture. Look at a PDF of the full piece It’s flat here, but you can imagine how it would unfold in your hands.

On the donation form and envelope, it closes with these simple phrases that say it all to the alumni-would-be-donors: “Cal alumni are changing the world. Won’t YOU champion the next generation of innovators?” followed by “Thanks for being who you are. We appreciate your generosity.”

In creating the design, Amy Cranch, the piece’s principal editor, knew they had to choose between pictures of the alums or pictures of things that represented their contributions to society. “The thing is way stronger,” says Amy. “It makes a crisp design, and it’s much easier to relate to.” Most people wouldn’t recognize or know who Douglas Engelbart is, but everyone uses what he invented: the computer mouse. “We tried to be careful not to pick just famous people, but to emphasize the impact that these people have on our daily lives,” says Amy.

“Instead of ‘You are this or that,’ it became an invitation to explore the categories of people, and to feel some excitement or pride that the thing you use everyday came from someone who went to the same school as you,” says Amy. The new approach still allowed Cal to play off the original concept of not being a cookie cutter and to still use “You” directly, but without jamming in onto people. “I firmly believe that using the personal stories opens the doors for further connections with people,” says Amy. People first, organizations second. Alumni first, Cal second.

Coming tomorrow: Find out why I think this piece works so well and about the test that Cal is running.

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Anatomy of a Direct Mail Makeover: Knead Until It Shines

This is the second in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | This is Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal have decided to break away from their standard business letter appeal and try a bold, full-color brochure to convince alumni to become new donors to the university. From their focus groups, they know that Cal alums consider themselves unique and diverse – not like the cookie cutter graduates from rival private schools. They’ve also decided to speak directly to the audience by using the word “You” prominently in the piece. So the creative team went to work.

In early drafts, the simple imagery of the cookie cutter was meshed with too many complex messages about alumni, says Amy Cranch, a principal editor with Cal’s development communications department. It said, “You challenge convention. You have an independent spirit. You think freely.” The whole idea was that your life has been transformed by graduating from Cal, but in a way that left you your own person, explains Amy.

“It just wasn’t working,” she recalls. “There were too many disconnects, and the concept of the cookie cutter itself was a cliché and not very strong. The copy made very strong assumptions about people. It was not an invitation to agree with the ideas. It felt too forced.”

Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, agrees. “The whole thing wasn’t holding together. It wasn’t telling the kind of personal story we wanted.”

This is where many people would have given up and gone back to the standard form letter. When you are creating messages, whether they take the form of a tagline or design theme or epiphany at the end of an essay, you have to keep kneading the bread dough. At this stage, Cal had a nice lump of dough, but it was still a sticky mess. But they kept kneading it, waiting for that smooth, satiny finish to appear that tells you that you are done.

Amy’s boss had a middle-of-the-night brainstorm. Instead of telling Cal alumni what they were and sounding presumptuous – just what Cal grads hate – they would use famous alumni who are often described as innovators, free thinkers, and creators.

Everyone has the ingredients for good bread, but it takes knowing how long to knead it to produce something delicious.

Coming Tomorrow: How Cal designs a piece all about famous alumni without abandoning the “You, the Donor” ideal.

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Anatomy of a Direct Mail Makeover: The Value in Listening

This is the first in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal), my alma mater. Read Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal had a problem: they needed to raise more money from alumni to support the diverse education and research programs where Cal excels, but their current direct mail program wasn’t increasing the size of the alumni donor pool. While the standard annual appeal in a letter format did a good job at renewing existing donors, says Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, the letters weren’t bringing in many new donors.

To learn more about these alumni who weren’t currently donating, Cal sponsored some focus groups. “We found that a lot of people felt like going to Cal was a big, impersonal experience and they didn’t have the same emotional connections and bonding experiences that you’d find at a smaller university,” says Virginia.

Cal must also contend with the misperception that as a state-funded school, it doesn’t really need individual donors. “At private schools,” explains Virginia, “you are educated about how the people before you are funding your education now, and that you need to give back so the school can go on. You don’t get that message at Cal.”

The alumni in the focus group also shared how they viewed themselves as a very diverse group and that the Cal experience enhanced that diversity, unlike other private institutions of similar caliber that churn out cookie-cutter graduates (the staid professionals that graduate from rival Stanford, for example, come to this Golden Bear’s mind).

The cookie-cutter imagery stuck with Virginia and her colleagues as they pulled together a creative brief for a new direct mail campaign centered on a full-color, multi-panel, graphic-laden brochure. While Cal had tried colorful brochures before, it would be the first time they had tried something as bold as they had in mind this time.

Coming Tomorrow: The cookie cutter concept falls apart, but an even better concept comes together.

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When “Just Do It” is Really Scary

When I was a young federal employee back in the early 90’s, I was all about the process of preparation and planning. Now that I’ve been self-employed for going on a decade, I lean more toward the “just do it” camp. By necessity, lots of nonprofit communicators are there too, because they don’t have the luxury of time to carefully plot out a strategy before acting. They need to leap into it and try to make something happen. Getting by with a half-way decent solution is better than no solution at all.

But sometimes, “just do it” is a really bad idea.

Last week, I met a bright-faced young man who was an outreach coordinator for a drug and alcohol rehab center. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea to do a newsletter. His boss had asked him to do one, so he was working on it, but he wasn’t sure it was the way to go.

I asked him who the audience for the newsletter was, and he said he didn’t really know. So I asked him who was on the mailing list. His reply: “Well, that’s the problem. There is no mailing list.” Yikes.

So here we have a young staff member, trying to do what his boss says, writing a newsletter for nobody. A very scary waste of time.

Even if you don’t have the time or resources to do a complete communications strategy, you simply MUST take 15 minutes to answer some basic questions before launching any new communications program. A good communications strategy answers about 10 different questions, but at a minimum, you need to answer three for everything you do:

1) Who is the audience?

2) What is the message?

3) What’s the best way to deliver the message?

I talked with the outreach coordinator about what his goals were (getting more referrals to the center) and who in the community could be helpful in meeting those goals. We talked about two categories of people specifically (law enforcement and parents). I explained how he should chat with some of the people he knew in these categories to get some ideas on what they cared about, so he could refine his messages to them. Then he could decide whether a newsletter was really the best approach. We talked a little bit about email newsletter mechanics, assuming that, in fact, would be a decent way to communicate with at least part of his target audience.

Even in the Nike commercials, all those “just do it” people still take a few minutes to sit down and put on the shoes. Sit down and take a few minutes to think it through before you launch your next big marketing idea.

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Great Stories and Tips from Katya

Katya Andresen spoke at the NC Center for Nonprofits conference today, which I was completely thrilled about for two reasons: (1) because it was a sure bet that she’d have great tips I could pass on to you, and (2) because it meant that I got to have coffee with one of my blogging buddies face-to-face. Katya didn’t disappoint in either case!

Katya started teaching before she even put on her microphone. In the minutes leading up to the session, she walked up and down the aisles, personally introducing herself and speaking to people one on one. What was she doing? Getting to know her audience by actually talking to them as individual people. It’s a lesson that all of us in nonprofit marketing preach (know thy audience, know thy audience) and Katya showed us what that means before she even officially got started. As she moved through her points, she was able to refer to the people she had met in the audience, turning your typical staid concurrent session into a more friendly and personable workshop atmosphere.

You can find her slides here on her blog, along with a new white paper from Network for Good called “Wired Fundraising: How Technology is Making Fundraising ‘Good to Go’” so I’m not going to cover her advice point by point. Do go view the slides, because she has four easy questions you should always ask and three actions you can take to delve into Web 2.0 if using social media is a new or scary idea for you.

Instead, let me recount just a few of the examples from Katya’s talk that drive home her points about reaching your audience based on their EXISTING values.

Take Katy’s employer, Network for Good. Their old home page was the typical “about us” text heavy home page. Their new home page is all about the audience — donors who want to give online to nonprofits through a single site. And nonprofits who want to be listed in their directory simply need to click on the bright orange “Are you a nonprofit” button to get to the info they need.

The AWARE Foundation wanted to reach teenage girls about health issues. Instead of creating the typical sterile, doctor’s office health site, they created a site that immediately appeals to teenage girls at TeenHealthTalk. The design is casual and a little messy (not unlike a teenager’s room) and by using the word “talk” in the domain, they’ve picked up on the #1 hobby of teenage girls. The language is also very casual and teen focused. Something tells me that “Why Are My Boobs Lopsided?” isn’t wording you’d find so prominently featured on most health-oriented sites. For example, it’s not on the AWARE Foundation’s main site. TeenHealthTalk goes where teen girls are, so they’ll be in a comfortable spot, and thus much more willing to receive the information the organization is giving.

CARE’s donor base was people in their 70’s, and the nonprofit wanted to move that average age down by a few decades. To appeal to women in their 40’s, CARE latched on to a value that many women in this age group are familiar with: wanting to feel like you have some control over your life and the power to do what you want with it. So rather than pitch all the merits of their programs, CARE is pitching that feeling of power. Donors are powerful, and the people donors help through CARE are also powerful. Poor people have the power to change their world and you have the power to help them do it.

Kiva (which was also mentioned yesterday) is another shining example of an organization getting out of the way and making it all about the people they serve, in this case, people who want to lend small amounts of money and the entrepreneurs in developing countries who use that money to lift themselves out of poverty. Kiva could have a home page all about the merits of microlending programs, but that’s deeper down in the site. The users are front and center.

In closing, here are a few great nuggets of wisdom from Katya:

–When you hear yourself saying, “if people only knew about our issue . . .”, stop right there. People don’t need loads of information. They need a personal connection to the issue. It’s your job to find that connection.

–”Marketing” is not slimy, so get over your fear of the word. Marketing is about being persuasive, which all nonprofits need to be. Marketing when done right is actually very respectful of people, because it’s about a conversation, understanding your audience’s perspective and speaking to it.

–If you are trying to make a new friend, you don’t run up and get in their face, introduce yourself, tell your entire history, and ask “Will you be my friend?” That sends people running away. Instead, you engage in a conversation where you get to know each other over time. You guide your choice of topics and words based on what this potential new friend is saying back to you. Use the same approach when seeking new friends (donors, volunteers) for your nonprofit.

–The values of your donors that you choose to use to connect with them (like CARE using power) will often have nothing to do with your cause. This is perfectly fine!

And my favorite tip of the presentation:

–Have a general idea who your audience is, but not a clue what their values are? Do some Robin Hood Marketing and buy a bunch of magazines that your audience reads. Tear out all the ads and paste them on the wall. What are some of the common themes? How are these advertisers trying to make the readers feel about their products? What emotions and values dominate? Those are the values you should try to link your organization and its issue to. Madison Avenue spent millions figuring it out and you spent $30 on magazines!

Thanks Katya for a great presentation and a great chat afterward!

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Tips for Nonprofits on Using Social Media Technology

This afternoon at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference, I attended another great session called “Social Media Technology: How to Raise Money, Recruit Volunteers, and Spread Your Message” by Chris Meade, COO of NPower, Charlotte Region.

NPower is a nonprofit consultancy that helps other nonprofits with technology. It has 13 affiliates around the U.S. Chris did an amazing job covering a huge topic in a little over an hour.

He opened the presentation with some general definitions and examples of what social media is and how it differs from traditional, linear communication. After going over some of the implications of using social media, Chris reminded everyone that social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of communication, but an add-on.

He broke down the field into four categories: Communications (podcasting, vlogs, blogs, rss, listservs), Organizing and Networking (event management, mapping, aggregators), Knowledge and Collaboration (wikis, bookmarking, discussion forums), and Hybrids (mashups, social shopping).

He then described the three ways that nonprofit can use social media.

(1) Raising Money: Friends asking friends for donations (sponsors for a 5K run), affinity shopping

(2) Recruiting and Engaging Volunteers: Friends getting others involved, self-service scheduling and participation (invitation management, meeting handouts), where knowledge is the volunteer’s contribution (support groups sharing stories and creating a body of experience and knowledge), training for staff, volunteers.

(3) Spreading the Message: Campaigning and advocacy, marketing and storytelling about mission and programs.

Next he shared some specific examples.

Komen effectively uses the “Friend to Friend” fundraising model for its walks/runs/events. You as a volunteer can use their template to ask friends to support you and you can chart your progress, including an honor roll of givers. You set a limited goal and your personal relationships help you meet it. They also do a ton of affinity shopping (all those pink products, the Garth Brooks Pink CD, etc.)

Kiva, the microlending network, lets donors lend to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world in very small amounts. At end of the loan period, you can get your money back. Default rate is less than 1%. It’s a very good way of taking wealth and helping other people on a one to one basis. The social media technology allows these very personal investments and connections to be made between people who are worlds away from each other. Volunteers have created a whole community around microlending.

wikiCancer — Allows people to create and edit the content of the site with stories and “what to do when diagnosed” tips. Wikis allow you to bring others in and compile resources and the latest thinking on an issue. You don’t have to wait for someone else to tell you the answer, because you are creating the answers yourself as a group.

Volunteermatch — A match-making site for nonprofits and volunteers that has grown into an online community, so you can hook up with other people who are interested in the same things you are.

NPower uses Sharepoint as a portal for its board, so they can share documents, calendars, etc. You don’t have to mail that board packet if everyone can easily access it online. Npower also uses Sharepoint as the CMS for their website.

Greenpeace is doing great work with viral videos on YouTube. (The hotel wireless blocked YouTube, so Chris couldn’t show the videos he wanted in the session, but I found them.) Share your message in 1-2 minutes. Well-linked videos allow you to dig deep and explore.

In closing, Chris offered these questions for nonprofits who are thinking about social media:

Is your audience online? More and more people will be, so it’s good to start now, even if your audience isn’t really there yet.

Are you willing to let others shape and morph your message?

Are you willing to share the “secret sauce?” You have to be willing to share strategy before it’s fully baked.

Do you have the time and interest to seed the process?

Chris suggests experimenting with social media as a new means of communication or volunteer engagement before using it as a fundraising tool. Move in slowly. Explore the various free sites, then procure and explore paid tools and technology that you can manage, once you have a good feeling for how it can work for you.

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