In addition to this we just passed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Columbus Day and Halloween are right around the corner and before you know it Thanksgiving will be here. You gotta' love this time of year. If you're at all like me, you're probably trying to take advantage of every remaining pleasant day with a vengeance. I won't bore you with all the details but I recently spent a three day weekend "up north" recently as we Michigander's like to say. "Up north" as you may know, can refer to any number of small towns, bergs, villages, state or county parks and cabins or cottages covering literally hundreds of square miles located north of wherever you may be.
I did a bit of work around the family cabin, spent a little time on the golf course (okay more than a little), and some time on the beach in the UP right next to US 2. It was warm enough to swim and body surf, yet cool enough to keep other humans away, that and the time of year I presume. On a gorgeous sunny afternoon I only saw about four people in three plus hours on a mile long stretch of beautiful sandy beach, what a treat! Oh, and I also watched the Fire Fighters parade in "downtown" Roscommon the day before. Every bit of it was thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing. I think it will be etched in my memory for some time.
But that's not why I'm writing to you today, at least not completely anyway. I want to share some more information with you about direct mail.
Non Profits - Direct Mail Trumps Email
There's a recent study by Campbell River on behalf of the non profit advisory body, Dunham+Company that found people were three times more likely to donate after being contacted by direct mail than email. The CEO of Dunham was a bit shocked, I'm not and I don't think you should be either. A well designed physical object in the mail receives much more attention than an email. How many emails do you delete every hour say nothing about every day? The study goes on to point out that the age category of 40 - 59 are the most responsive to direct mail. Hmmmn, those are the folks who usually have a bit more disposable income, right? In 2010, 34% of them responded to a direct mail solicitation by making a donation. Fasten your seatbelt, in 2012 that went up to 47%! No I'm not making this up. If you are one of the many organizations getting ready for that big year end appeal it's not too late to add relevant personalization and increase your results too!
Insights on the Financial Industry
Caslon, the management company of PODi, the digital printing initiative, recently analyzed 49 PODi case studies in the financial services industry.
They determined that these studies can be classified into 6 major challenges for financial marketers and that these challenges are very similar in nature to many other industry markets. For each challenge they identified key solutions and subsequently linked each to a solution. The table below shows the results.