Top 4 reasons why charities should send a direct marketing campaign

With the correct expertise, direct mail offers a unique, personalised, and creative format that works to strike interest in new potential supporters, and reignite excitement amongst your existing base. The effectiveness of this has been proven by market research, where it’s reported that 72% of sponsors feel favourably to receiving post that honours their contribution.

No matter how just or uplifting your cause is, support can only really gain momentum if people know about it. Direct mail is an effective and efficient way to raise awareness in a truly captivating manner, where well-written and designed content can evoke all kinds of emotions. It can initiate a surge of empathy, outrage, shock, or concern that will empower people to take action. Here are just some of the advantages charities can pounce upon with a well constructed direct marketing campaign.

Protects charity and customer safety

When dealing with the personal data of members of the public, you need to be aware of the risks of mishandling sensitive information. GDPR (general data protection regulation) was introduced by the EU back in 2018 and laid bare all the dos and don’ts regarding customers’ personal data (their address, phone number, email, name, age, and so on).

The consequences for ignoring these rules result in a hefty fine, sometimes seizing a percentage of global revenue, or up to £17,483,700 (20 million euros).

Since post-Brexit, however, things have been complicated and organisations are ever more concerned with the risk of mishandling personal data. The beauty of partially addressed mail means you can completely avoid reliance on expansive personal data in order to bolster exposure.

Where you can administer a highly personalised fully addressed mail campaign, this requires digging into customer-specific information. But a partially addressed mail strategy frees you of all the worries and legal obligations to a tricky data protection landscape.

Partially addressed mail utilises different kinds of statistical insights that don’t invade peoples’ privacy, such as geo-demographic and postcode analysis, making it especially useful for local and regional-based charities. You can secure new and retain established supporters through Look-A-Like and Top-Up methods, respectively, without the burden of the GDPR.

This way it is easy to protect customers' privacy rights and protects your organisation from any potential scandal. Threatening the GDPR may be disastrous for a charity’s reputation, but by working with experts like the specialists at Sorted, you can maintain your organisation's transparency and respectability. An openly trustworthy philanthropic body will be unstoppable in inspiring peoples’ own conscientiousness.

Integration with wider campaign

Direct mail is also a great opportunity to streamline your whole campaign. Made easy when working with professionals in the industry, you have the option to integrate your new direct mail project with your wide marketing strategy.

The print you use to advertise with can work to complement and coincide with, for example, your email traffic. Having homogenous content, design, and snappy messaging undoubtedly makes your branding appear more professional, consistent, engaging, and trustworthy.

Improved personalisation

Crafting unique, creative, and personalised campaign material is a great way to build those all important emotional connections with your audience. By tailoring your cause to a specific area, for example, customers will feel personally represented by your goals and will be able to envision how contributing to fundraising will improve their local community.

Clever methods of personalisation can be woven into any and all aspects of a direct mail campaign. From targeted offers and services, geo-specific case studies, images, and infographics, all of which can help your customers feel relevant to and invested in the prospects of your charity’s lobby.

Achieve business KPIs

With an established history in the industry, Sorted has the technological infrastructure that makes KPI (key performance indicators) easy to evaluate in depth. We know what your charity’s success rate ought to look like and accurately tracking KPI numbers is a vital part of ensuring your organisation is on the path to achieving its full potential.

Working with you on a one to one basis will allow the experts at Sorted to engineer the best KPIs entirely tailored to your organisation’s specific goals and needs, but here are some of the most commonly recommended examples:

Response rate: tracking who responds to your direct mail

Conversion rate: out of the total respondents, recording how many act on the request

CPA (cost per acquisition): the cost of securing each new supporter

Revenue per donation: money made through each donation minus the CPA. This determines the average profit value.

ROI (return on investment): this is your overall picture. Here we look at how successful the direct male truly is and how much it is advancing your cause.

Kick start your charity campaign with Sorted

Sorted Direct Mail is at the forefront of the marketing industry with over two decades of proficiency under its belt. Based in the West Midlands, Sorted provides an expansive and holistic service across the UK. Unlike other providers, we offer assistance at every stage of the marketing campaign from its very conception to beyond its completion.

We understand that having to deal with multiple contacts for different elements of the same campaign is only a hindrance to its overall success. For a full and polished service covering production and design, printing, enclosing, postage, personalisation, database management and more, contact Sorted today to begin collaborating on a revolutionising outreach mission.