by Bill Jacobs | Jan 14, 2019 | Direct Mail
Allegories for Unintegrated Direct Mail Acquisition Testing Activities: • Tailor fitting a funeral suit • Climbing a tall ladder on a building that’s on fire • Planting orange trees above the freeze line Don’t get me wrong. I love direct mail. But sometimes, context...
by Bill Jacobs | Jan 11, 2019 | Direct Mail
Like many of you, my mailbox is stuffed with nonprofit appeals between October 1st and December 31st. Here is a recap of the direct mail I received this year, and the insights I noted: • I received an even 50 pieces of direct mail. Thirty-five pieces were appeals from...
by Bill Jacobs | Nov 7, 2018 | Direct Mail
Here we are again in the midst of the big fundraising season. As I type, nonprofit organizations’ direct mail packages are landing in our mailboxes – with dances of response rates dancing in their heads. This is always an anxiety filled time. Usually, election cycles...
by Bill Jacobs | Jul 25, 2017 | Direct Mail
Last time, I discussed testing the statistical difference in response rates. In this blog, we will tackle average gift size testing. I’ll start with the problem we always run into: someone will give us the average gift sizes of a test and control, and ask if the...
by Bill Jacobs | Mar 8, 2017 | Direct Mail, nonprofit analytics
Somewhere over the rainbow in fundraising, two metrics were established as the gold standard: gross revenue generated and the number of donors acquired. And that’s a shame. It’s a shame because you can optimize these two metrics into organization ruin....
by Bill Jacobs | Sep 14, 2016 | Agency, Direct Mail, nonprofit analytics
Any of us that have been in the fundraising agency business have had the following meeting a least a dozen times: There are a bunch of somber looking board of director types from the nonprofit organization in the main conference room. They distrust agencies. Unlike...
