Ep 299 | How Direct Mail Can Impact Your Fundraising with Wilson Zehr

In a world dominated by digital marketing, it's easy to overlook the power of traditional methods. But what if I told you that one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience is sitting right in your mailbox?

Direct mail remains a potent tool for nonprofits to generate brand awareness, target new audiences, and communicate impact. In this episode, I'm joined by Wilson Zehr, a seasoned expert with over two decades of experience in high technology and telecom, to explore the untapped potential of direct mail for nonprofit organizations.

Why Direct Mail Still Matters

Wilson shares compelling reasons why direct mail should be an integral part of your nonprofit's marketing strategy:

• Unparalleled reach: Direct mail can access every household and business in America, six days a week
• Proactive communication: Unlike digital methods, direct mail allows you to initiate conversations when it's most relevant
• Precise audience targeting: Tailor your message to specific demographics with remarkable accuracy
• Built into daily routines: People are accustomed to checking their mail, making it a non-intrusive form of marketing

Creative Approaches to Direct Mail

Gone are the days of boring postcards. Wilson introduces us to various direct mail formats that can help your nonprofit stand out:

• Standard postcards: Cost-effective for simple messages
• Jumbo postcards: More space for impactful visuals and messaging
• Self-mailers: Ideal for conveying more detailed information
• Letters: Perfect for personalized, in-depth communication
• Snap packs: Intriguing format that encourages opens

Key Elements of Effective Direct Mail

Wilson breaks down the formula for direct mail success:

• 70% list selection
• 20% offer
• 10% creative elements

By focusing on these components, you can craft direct mail pieces that resonate with your audience and drive action.

Integrating Direct Mail with Your Overall Strategy

Learn how to seamlessly incorporate direct mail into your nonprofit's marketing mix:

• Complement digital efforts for a holistic approach
• Use direct mail to validate and reinforce online messaging
• Leverage the tangibility of mail pieces for lasting impact

Are you ready to revolutionize your nonprofit's outreach? Tune in to discover how direct mail can become your secret weapon for connecting with donors, sharing your story, and making a lasting impression.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

04:09 Why Direct Mail Matters in Fundraising Direct mail offers unique benefits: reaching every household reliably, proactive communication, precise audience targeting, and integration into daily routines. With an average return of $12 for every dollar invested, direct mail remains a valuable part of a holistic marketing strategy for nonprofits.
09:38 Creative Direct Mail Strategies Wilson shares a case study of a successful school bond campaign using targeted direct mail alongside other marketing channels. He emphasizes the importance of tailoring messages to different audience segments and timing mailings strategically to maximize impact and voter engagement.
14:06 Direct Mail Formats and Best Practices Various direct mail exist, including postcards, self-mailers, letters, and snap packs. While there are pros and cons of each format choosing the right option is based on message complexity and audience preferences.
23:02 Crafting Effective Direct Mail Pieces The key to successful direct mail is understanding your audience, crafting a compelling offer, and creating eye-catching visuals. Segmentation, targeting, and aligning messaging with audience values to drive conversions and engagement.

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Who doesn't love to get mail in their mailbox that isn't bills? I know I do. I would love to get mail that's fun, that's inspiring, that's impactful, and direct mail is just that. And for nonprofit organizations, it's an extremely powerful tool to help you generate brand awareness, to target new people, to build new audiences, to grow your base and just to communicate the impact that you're doing, but like email and other social media and other marketing practices, we want to make sure that our direct mail is not super spammy and shares our story and doesn't just ask for what we need. Yes, we want that ask to be there, but we want it to be part of a story and an inspirational piece. So today, I've got Wilson Zehr here today to talk to us about some direct mail strategies that we can utilize in our organizations to connect more with our audience and with our potential donors. Dr. Wilson Zehr has 20 plus years experience in high technology and telecom and over a decade working with internet related products and services. He started his career as a software engineer, then expanded into full life cycle product marketing, program management, strategic alliances, executive leadership, consulting and teaching at the university level. Over the course of his career, Wilson has created numerous new products and brands and successfully brought them to market. Wilson has established and managed strategic alliances with a number of the world's largest technology and communication firms, and he is a serial entrepreneur who has been part of started or advised more than a dozen technology startups. He's also the co founder and CEO of Zehr mail sendex and Eastern Oregon ventures. We have a great conversation just around the different types of direct mail and ways that we can kind of utilize them in our fundraising, how we can use them to be impactful, how we can connect with donors, how we can make sure that they connect with us, and that we know when we've sent something out that we have information that we can, you know, follow up on, that we can engage with them. So I hope that you'll listen to this episode of direct mail is something that you are thinking about implementing or expanding on for your organization. And I know we typically think about direct mail at your end, but there's so many different ways that you can utilize it, and so I'm really excited for you to maybe get some exciting strategies in this episode before we get to it. This episode is brought to you by do good university. This is a unique membership just for Nonprofit Professionals and development leaders to help you with the resources that you need to take the next step to do the dang thing and to raise more money. I'm so excited to be able to be allowed inside this platform with founder, Patrick Kirby, we go live every week with Q and A's where we answer your burning questions. So whether you have a question about your event that you've got coming up, or a capital campaign or a marketing strategy, or how to make that ask, we are here to answer all of them. And even if you don't have a question, come hang out with like minded nonprofit professionals who are going through the same thing you are that could use support, and you can learn from them, just by the questions they ask and the feedback that they get. So if you want a free two week trial, so you can check out two of those free live Q and A's and see all the on demand courses that are available to you inside the platform. You can do that at the first click.net/dgu, there, you'll find a bonus episode I did with Patrick Kirby talking about the power of community when it comes to doing our jobs better. And you'll also find the link to that two week free trial again. That's thefirstclick.net/dgu the letter U. Hope to see you inside at one of our live Q A calls soon. Let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Hey, friends, please join me in welcoming Wilson Zehr, to the podcast. Wilson, thanks for being here.

Dr. Wilson Zehr
Thanks. Sami, thanks for having me. Appreciate the opportunity.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So there's a lot of ways that we can fundraise. Why is direct mail something that you are passionate about and that you think should be included in a nonprofit's fundraising strategy.

Dr. Wilson Zehr
You know, direct mail. Direct mail has a lot of benefits as a marketing medium. So, you know, oftentimes, you know, in the current times, we think about digital marketing. We think about, you know, SEO, we think about AdWords. We think about a lot of social media, of course, a lot of tools that can reach out to people quickly and inexpensively. But there and direct mail, though, still serves an important purpose based on. Characteristics of the medium. There's certain things that direct mail does that no other medium can do. In particular, direct mail can reach every household and business in America six days a week, and there's no medium thick and reliably, no other medium that could reliably do that, certainly not, you know, with the level of reliability. Secondly, it's proactive communication. You know, if you were thinking about search engine marketing or something like that, you have to wait for people to find you, whereas with direct mail, if I know who I want to talk to, I can reach out and connect with them when I want to have the conversation or when I think it's appropriate to have the conversation. So we have a special offer. It's the right time of year, you know, right now we're talking about income tax season. People are getting refunds. If I want to reach out to somebody and and suggest ways they might want to use that refund, this is a right great time to get out in front of them. Thirdly, is this idea of precise art audience targeting. You know, if I want to reach Jewish dentists in New Jersey that have purchased a car in the last six months, I can do that with direct mail. Those lists are very well developed. If I'm doing that with, you know, something like AdWords or some kind of social media tool like Facebook, it becomes very difficult to target that audience at that level of granularity. And then, you know, it's built into the American psyche. You know, they try telemarketing these days. You know, you reach out and you call somebody, you interrupt them during their daily routine. Most people, I think, of something like only 30% of the population, US population, even use the landline anymore. Everybody's using their mobile phone. So you call somebody in their mobile phone and you're trying to explain to them why they should, you know, vote for candidate X or candidate y. Office, oftentimes you don't meet with, you know, very kind response. I mean, it's, it's a tough job these days. Telesales, yeah. But with direct, with mail. I mean, people are, you know, the Postal Service talks about this mail moment, right? They won't romanticize it. They say, you know, people come home and you know there's, there's light from the heavens, and you know, angels sing, and then when people check their mailbox, and all the special stuff, and I'm not sure to that extent, but, but me, personally, I come home, I check my mail every day, I look through and there's some things I want, some things I don't want, and I'm done with it. I move on to the next thing, some. Sometimes I'll find something that's noteworthy. I put it on the fridge to come back to later, but it's all part of my daily routine. You know, I don't think anything of it. I don't think of it as being an interruption as much most advertising is. So that all works to our advantage. And that's why, on average, direct mail, the Direct Marketing Association, tells us to direct mail returns $12 for every dollar invested. And if you look across the various range of advertising mediums that you could work that's a very good result.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, well, there's two things. So two things I want to touch on that you just said. The first one is the beauty of when I see something, if it appeals to me, I can put it on my fridge. And, I mean, I'm a digital marketer, this is what we do. Like, staying top of mind is really important, and that's why I love, like, this concept of of direct mail being part of your holistic marketing experience, because it can very much validate everything that you're doing online. But I don't have to, like, sort through all my email to try to find that one email that I remember that I want to take a look at. I can see that direct mail piece that I set aside, that I didn't throw in the trash because it's something I wanted to address later. So I think that's one really impactful thing. And then the second thing that you said in that was the ROI piece in that investing in marketing that we know is going to bring back revenue is valuable. I think we tend to think that social media is the place that we should go. But what we know is direct mail has good ROI, like you just shared email marketing has good ROI. And so like, paying attention to the strategies that are going to bring in the dollars for the organization is super important. And and making direct mail a part of our holistic marketing strategy is is really, really strong. So like, how can we kind of think about direct mail, maybe outside of just the postcard? Like, does direct mail just have to be those big postcard flyers about, like, the next all the homes that are listed in our area for sale or whatnot? Like, how can we get creative with direct mail pieces?

Dr. Wilson Zehr
Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I you know, I want to, I want to touch on answer that specific question in terms of creative pieces. But also want to come back to your point, this idea of a marketing mix, right? You know? So it's not just, it's just not all or nothing. It's all direct mail or all social media or all. Something else. You know, we can have a mixture, and those tools are determined by what we're trying to accomplish. You know, we had a, we worked on a campaign earlier, you know, last year there was a school bond measure. And the way school bonds work, and in Eastern Oregon, where we did this program, was that it becomes, you know, property tax financing. So you pay an extra, you know, so many cents per $1,000 of assessed value. And so what we did with that campaign, as we started out thinking about, you know, how do we target the audience? And so, you know, the the audience itself. You know, there's some people that are our homeowners that pay property taxes and some that are renters who don't. Some people have kids in school and some people don't. So we were able to pull a list of registered voters, we were able to break that into homeowners versus non homeowners, and then those with school aged children and those who didn't, and then design messaging for each of those audiences. And then we were able to, you know, like with a lot of cameras, we built a website. We put video campaigns, you know, with kids that went to school, or the grandparents, or, you know, people who who benefited from the old building and would benefit from the new one. We went through the Parent Teachers Association and social media and information in schools. We went to coffee meetings, but we were also able to, you know, we did yard signs and door hangers and stuff. But we also, you know, we were able to pull a voter file, you know, divide into those demographics. We were able to do a direct mail postcard right at the beginning, telling people about the positives and negatives, you know, based on the audience, right? If you have, you know, if you have, you're a homeowner and you're going to pay more. We want to explain why that's a good deal. If you're a homeowner and you don't have kids in school. We have to explain why that's a community benefit and why it makes the community a better place to live. If you're not a homeowner, we can tell you about the benefits that you're going to receive, and it's not going to cost you anything extra, but we can do a campaign right up front in Oregon. By the way, this was in Eastern Oregon and Oregon. Everything's vote by mail. It's been, has been that way for 25 or 30 years, so we know when, when, you know we can we go out with a piece that right away. We know when people are getting the voter pamphlet in the mail. We hit them with a piece. Then we know when the ballots are due. Because some people just, you know they get that, you know, they get the ballot in the mail. They vote right away. And so we want, we want to be there right in front of them before they cast a ballot, and then we know when the deadline is, so we're going to hit them again before the deadline. So all of those things taken together allowed us to get, you know, pass the bond with an overwhelming majority. And in previous years they, you know, they just eked out a win, and we got a very substantial results based on all of those mediums working together to get us to the right result. So I think as marketers, I mean, it behooves us to know what each of these tools do and where we can use, you know, understand, you know, we talk about the customer journey these days, where in the journey it makes sense and what kind of behavior we're trying to motivate, and if we can do that, then we can generate very positive results. But back to you, back to your question about formats. Well, I should pause for a second see if you want to add something there.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Now, I just wanted to say that that was such a great example of right message at the right time, which is what the marketing Mo is right like, we want to send the right message at the right time to the right customer to make the right decision. And that was such a beautiful example of how to do that in a campaign. So I just, that's all I wanted to add. I think that was, that was a brilliant example in kind of how that works, but yes, so carry on with creative pieces.

Dr. Wilson Zehr
No, thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I mean, you know, the the the idea of a buyer's journey is one that's, as you know, is really important in marketing, and so we, we use the right tools at the right place to motivate the kind of behavior we're hoping for in terms of formats, there are lots of different formats we can use for direct mail. Postcard tends to be, I actually have a visual I get, I can share, I'll share with you after the session. But postcards tend to be very popular these days because they're they're inexpensive. First of all, they're the least expensive thing you can do in the mail. But they're also relatively easy. You don't need a lot of technical skills in order to execute a post a card, and it's an immediate impression in the mail. So as long as you have a short message that's easy to grasp, that you can convey in one graphic. Or a limited number of words, it tends to be very good. On the other hand, if you have a more complex message, or you have something that's more personal, the contents more personal, like take, for example, of mortgage marketing, you know, you're trying to get somebody to do a cash out refi, and in order to do that work, we might lean on credit score data. So we've got, you know, we've got the value of somebody's home. We know what payments are making today. We know what what deals we can offer them, and so we can recalculate their payments and show them what they're going to what their APR looks like over the next 30 years. But that's all personal information. We wouldn't want to expose that on a postcard, necessarily, and there's lots more information than we'd probably put on a postcard. So in that case, we're taught working towards a, you know, a letter or snap pack. Honestly, in this graphic, I talk about, we talk about four formats we you know, and there are many more, but the four we see most often is a postcard, a self mailer, a letter, or what we're calling a snap back, a snap pack. The technical term for that is a pressure sealed mailer. And basically, a pressure sealed mailer is what you would get, you know, when you the bank sends you a pin number in the mail, or you get a rebate. You know, you tear off the edges and you open it up, and the information's inside. So if you're looking for an immediate impression or the least expensive option, usually that's a postcard. And with postcards, we then we opens up the discussion of a whether you want a standard postcard or a jumbo postcard. These days, jumbo postcards are a better deal, and that from a marketing standpoint, I can explain why. But then, if you start talk as self mailer is, of course, a sheet of paper that's folded and tabbed and it gives you more information inside, but it's still, you know, people could hold it and they see in it, so, you know, gives you more space, but it's still not completely personal. A letter as of course, completely personal, a letter or snap pack. The problem, the challenge with a letter is, as soon as you put a letter in an envelope and send it to somebody, then you have to get an open before you can get an impression. And so the trick is, how do I make it interesting enough to get an open? Do I do a teaser on the outside? Do I use a personal stamp and a handwritten font? Is it just or do I make it look like a bill? You know, everybody's gonna open a bill, and then, you know, the snap pack is somewhere in between, because people associate it with a rebate or PIN or something like that, they usually get opened. But,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
well, I can't, I mean, I struggle to kind of think of how a nonprofit would use that, because that feels a little bit like, almost, kind of like, click baby on the on the nonprofit side. But I, I think, like the postcards, obviously the letters are really popular year end campaigns, tax receipts, things like that. But if we're thinking about like, let's just, let's just focus on, like, the standard postcard, because I think that's what a lot of people are doing. Like, what are things that you find people most commonly leave off of those pieces that hurts their ability for conversion. Like, what are we not putting in there? That it's important? Because I think we tend to struggle with self editing. We want to, just like, word vomit, everything that we're doing. And so when we think about these direct mail pieces, these postcards, like, what are the critical things that we want to make sure we include so that we can get people to that next step, to take that conversion. That's good

Dr. Wilson Zehr
point. Yeah, we do have, I mean, back to your point. We do have a number of customers that use all of these pieces in the nonprofit space. We've got a fire department in the East Coast that does fundraising every quarter, and depending on our audience, they'll use a snap pack or a postcard or a letter, depending on what response best and what audience they're trying to reach. You know, for a business user, they're almost always hitting them with a letter, you know, a business customer, whereas a consumer, the the, you know, the postcards are more popular, and somebody who's donated year after year after year, they just hit them with a snapdoc. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of a mix, and, like a lot of other marketing, the only way to really know is to test, you know, try some some samples, and see what, what resonates with your audience. But if you're going back to a postcard, I mean, with the postcard today, you know, we are actually the most common for us is three sizes. We do a standard postcard, jumbo postcard, and what we're calling a sumo postcard. Sumo postcards a little bigger, a little longer, we don't see them that often, the postage a little more expensive. With a standard postcard that does can usually be there. Four and a quarter by five and a half or or four by six. And the other decision to make with a postcard is whether they're black and white, both sides, black and white one side, or color both sides. The limit that is, you know, black and white postcard is kind of the least expensive thing you can put in the mail. So if you've got a something like a reminder, you know, just this is, you know, you've got an appointment, a dentist appointment in three days, that's the right piece to use, you know, to minimize your expense. But if you really want to jump out and get people's attention, then color book has a role, important role to play in that usually the standard the jumbo postcard, is a step up. It's a little bigger. That's that would be the limitation to the standard postcard is that the address takes up most of the address side, so you can put a little bit of additional verbiage or art, but there's not that much room for it. On the back side, there's room for some message and a picture you see, but it's limited. With the jumbo postcard, which can be either five and a half by eight and a half or six by nine, we're going to get more space to work with. And because it's like a little billboard in the mail, you know this the bigger image or the bigger message is really going to pop a lot better with that. Said, you know that a lot of times it's not, we don't see the increase in return. Well, let me add one more tidbit. So it used to be that a jumbo postcard mailed at the same rate as for a first class letter. So postcards always had have had a discount rate. So that's why the black and white postcard is the most effective. The Postal Service in recent years has been increasing rates at about twice a year, and so I think two increases ago, one of the concessions they made to the industry is they allowed postcard rates to apply to the jumbo postcard is what wells the standard postcard. So that made that they the jumbo postcard more expensive, just slightly more expensive than a standard postcard. And I have a lot more real estate to work with, both on the address side and on the on the image side or the message side. And what we found is that we could do color both sides, and we have lots of customers to do, but the sweet spot tends to be color one side on color on the image side with a message, but black and white on the address side allows us to get really pop in the mail, but still minimize our expense. So we sell more four over one jumbo postcards than anything else you know, in first class mail, and it tends to be a very effective tool, as long as our message is crisp. Once again, it's a it's a billboard. So you're going to get that immediate impression, but in that 30 seconds or whatever, when you're trying to make that right impression, it's really going to pop.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, so what are you including on that in order to make sure that it does encourage people to take that next step? Because it's easy to put it on the fridge and be like, Yeah, I'll deal with that later. But like, how do we make it easy for people to take that next step when they get the piece of the mail right?

Dr. Wilson Zehr
So that's the, that's the, you know, that's the big question, is the important question, and it really depends on the audience. So let me, let me share a model first. I mean, when we think about the effectiveness of direct mail, we tend to divide it into three components. We know, one being the audience, the second being the offer, and the third being the advertising, or, you know, the creative or the artwork, what we find is that if we put the right offer in front of the right people, good things happen. And so when we think about that formula, it's about 70% list, 20% offer, and whatever's left is creative. So the first, the first, the first challenge is to make sure we're talking the right person, and that's why, when the example I used earlier, it was important that we, first of all, we targeted the voter file just people are going to vote, and then we broke them out based on, you know, what message would appeal to them. So the same thing applies here. You know, we're going to need to understand who our audience is, what kind of audience of offer is going to get them to react, and then find a graphic that pops that communicates that very quickly. So I we have a customer who's selling insurance products, you know. So when you're out of work, it'll help compensate you. And what they do is they show a graphic, a bar graph. They say, this is your you know, this is what you make today. This is what it looked like when you're out of work. This is what you look like with insurance, you know. And it's very. Very compelling for that particular audience. Sometimes it's something that's thought provoking, you know, you know your eco trust, and you show a pile of trash, you know, and animals trying to struggling to survive in that environment, it's like, Oh, my God, you know. So, so is what is going to what is going to evoke the right kind of reaction from your audience, what's going to get their attention, and what's going to motivate the kind of behavior you want. And that's really going to be different depending on who we're trying to target,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
but that's what that's I mean, I love this. Oh, go ahead, sorry. I think overall, as we kind of wrap this up, I think the thing that I love that you're saying is it's very similar to how you would craft your email marketing strategy. It's about segments, it's about targeting, it's about right message for those people, and it's about creating imagery and messaging that's going to connect with them based off of their values, because you've taken the time to segment that group so you can have specific messaging for those people, and that's what's going to help you with those conversions. So if you were going to kind of leave everybody with maybe one last tip for direct mail and why it's a powerful tool in their toolbox. What would you say?

Dr. Wilson Zehr
Well, I think they, you know, well, that's a hard one, because there's so much, but this idea of understanding segmenting and understanding your audience and what's going to motivate the kind of behavior you want, and as you pointed out earlier, looking at, you know, coming back to this buyers journey, and where are you in that journey, and what does it take to move your customer to the next step? I think those are really important things. And as marketers, I mean, that's that's an important part of our job, is understanding the customer and what motivates them, and what kinds of creative things we can do to motivate behavior. And direct mail is no different. And email marketing, as you point out, any of those mediums we use, that process from a marketing standpoint, looks very similar. But how do we execute that within the context of a direct mail campaign. And I think, I really think that, you know, once, once you have your handles around, that tools like their mail that we offer to allow you to deliver direct mail faster, easier, less expensive, become very compelling. You know, because we can help you, you can literally be in somebody's mailbox. You know, if you thought about a message today, you could be admit somebody's mailbox tomorrow the next day at a very affordable price. So that's yeah, direct mail. That's the other thing is, a lot of people don't know how to get started, and with a tool like Xero mail, what makes it really easy? And if you have any challenges, you just call us. So we tell you how what it takes and what to do.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I love that. Well, we'll link that resource up in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/299, but Wilson, if people want to connect with you more, learn more about how you support organizations in direct mail. How do they do that?

Dr. Wilson Zehr
Well, they can reach out to me directly. Wilson@zairmail.com that's like air mail with a Z on the front. So Z, a, I R, M, a, I l.com, or they can call us toll free, 888980066, or the website works too, www.zairmail.com.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I love that. Well. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom. I know there's so much more that we could talk about with about with direct mail, so we'll have to have you back. But thanks for kind of giving people this introduction, this, like big overview on how this can be helpful for their organizations.

Dr. Wilson Zehr
Yeah, I'm not happy to do it once again. Thank you for the opportunity. We're happy to talk with anybody who's interested. We spent a lot of time dealing with this medium and trying to help people be successful.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So big. Thank you to Wilson for joining me today. I hope that you got some great ideas for ways that you can implement direct, direct mail into your marketing strategy. Again, you can find the show notes, the resources and all of the information that he shared at thefirstclick.net/299, I hope that you'll subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review, if it feels great, and comment below if you're watching this on YouTube, I'd love to hear what it was that you loved most about this episode, or any other topics that you think might be helpful for us to cover, or guests even that you think would be great for other people to learn from. Thank you so much for listening and taking time with me each and every Tuesday and for now, I'll see you in the next one.