Segregated marketing hurts

A study by Convio shouldn't surprise you: It says integrated marketing works. Read it -- Integrated Marketing: The Power of Combining Online Marketing with Direct Mail for Extraordinary Results. Once you're there, you can download the full report (registration required).

... donors engaged through multiple communication channels have higher long-term value (give more each year), retention and lifetime value. Specifically, we found that direct mail donors who were engaged online but continued to give solely through the mail renewed at much higher rates than those not engaged online -- almost 10 points higher for multi-year donors. They also gave about twice as much per year, primarily driven by a lift in giving frequency.

This isn't exactly stop-the-presses news. Integrated marketing has always worked; why would it be any different when you include the online medium?

So why do many nonprofits still run direct mail and online marketing out of different (and sometimes hostile) silos?

Over the past few years, the online channel has become significant source of revenue for many nonprofits. Even old-line organizations are starting to engage meaningful numbers of donors online.

It's past time for the channels to work together.

Technorati Tags: integrated marketing, nptech

Comments

[Nancy E. Schwartz]

Jeff, Thanks for making this critical point. But I'd go one step more (or a few) to emphasize that nonprofits must get members/volunteers/donors/board members out of their respective silos as well. There are incredible overlaps (or prospective overlaps) among these groups that are too often neglected or de-emphasized. Work it, nonprofits.

Best,
Nancy Schwartz, publisher
www.GettingAttention.org

[Ramsey Fahel]

Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.

The proposed recent "Do not mail" is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?

I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!

The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today's [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today's merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer's right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.

To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”

We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.

http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html

Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel