Direct Mail for departments, clubs and societies
Best Practice Guidelines, hints and tips
Individual Giving Team
Last updated 18 September 2014
Direct Mail can be a great tool to engage your constituents, but it is not as simple as putting a letter
in the post and hoping that every person will respond with a donation! This document is designed to
help you think about the many elements that make up a fundraising mailing and help you with some
of the core elements: from scheduling your time to developing your fundraising copy.
Please contact the Individual Giving team at annual.giving@devoff.ox.ac.uk with any questions. To
explore a direct mail appeal for your department, club or society, please complete a Fundraising
Communication Proposal form, as found at: www.advancingoxford.ox.ac.uk/sharedresources.
Contents:
1. The five essentials to planning a Direct Mail
2. 20 steps to delivering a Direct Mail
3. Building your case for support
4. Data selection
5. Planning and resources
6. Designing your mail pack
7. Seven common mistakes of a Direct Mail
8. Your mailing is sent – what next?
1. The five essentials to planning a Direct Mail
1. Case for
support
Be really clear on what you are fundraising for and why it is important – see
section 3.
2.
Departmental
Fit
What are the priorities of the department, club or society?
Does it fit with other fundraising priorities, e.g. of the Division and wider
University?
Do you have buy-in from senior management?
How much time do you have?
What resources do you have?
What is your budget?
What does the calendar for the year ahead look like?
Have you contacted UODO to discuss your mailing? All fundraising must be
coordinated by UODO and 3 months’ notice is required
3. Resources
4. Other
Considerations
(also see the
Relationship
Does your activity fall in October, November, January or June? Direct mail by
departments, clubs and societies must be in these months, unless it is a
Best Practice Guidelines - Direct Mail for departments, clubs and societies
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Management
Protocols for
fundraising)
partnership mailing with the college(s) whose alumni are being contacted
Have you completed the relevant fundraising request form?
Do you have all the necessary training and access to DARS?
Is there an existing fund set up and have you spoken to the Gift Registry about
processing donations?
Does this appeal affect your existing giving page on the Campaign website?
5. Managing
expectations
Cost
Time
Response rate
£1,000 upwards - factor in design, time, print and postage
3-6 months
Charity sector estimates 0.3- 0.8% return, but varies based on
alumni engagement. Some direct mail appeals can be more
effective (e.g. 1-5%), if targeted correctly with excellent data
Key
Quite significant amount of planning/time
considerations ROI is generally low
Good to measure how engaged alumni are
2. 20 steps to delivering a Direct Mail
Develop your case for
support
Plan your schedule
Complete a primary
selection of your data
on DARS
Plan your budget
Get support from
both UODO and
your department
Complete the
Fundraising
Communication
Proposal form
Book your designer,
printer and mailing
house
Collect quotes and
images
Write your
fundraising copy and
submit to your
designer
Consider what is in
your appeal pack
Select your data and
have it checked
Gain sign-off from:
UODO , department,
anyone that features
in your appeal
Send your design to
the printers and data
to the mailing house
Confirm your gift
processing and
thanking procedures
Work out a postmailing plan
Work out a
stewardship plan
Set up a reporting
process
Update your website
and online giving page
on the Campaign site
Ensure the appeal
(and responses) are
added to DARS
Write an analysis
report
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3. Building a Case for support
Your case for support is typically not your proposal or ask, but an internal document that you then
need to translate for your audience. What is it that you are raising money for, and why? Six key
questions you may wish to ask to help you in this:
i.
ii.
iii.
What is your vision?
Why is it important?
Why do you need to meet this need?
iv.
v.
vi.
What is the urgency?
How do you propose to meet the need?
What are you missing?
Building your case often takes time. You will then need to translate your case for support into the
copy for your appeal (see section 6).
4. Data Selection
Your data selection is fundamental to your mailing. Are you contacting all alumni? Who are you
excluding? Will you send it to donors or non-donors, or both? Do your constituents have mailing
preferences? Will you mail worldwide, or just the UK? Will you pre-populate details onto donation
forms or merge ask amounts into letters? There are lots of questions around data and it is worth
looking at who you already contact and how.
You must use DARS for your mailing, so ensure you have enough training to be able to use the
system properly or have agreed who will undertake the data selection on your behalf. Always get
someone to check your data – it is imperative that you have the right exclusions on your queries to
ensure constituents with negative Mail Preferences or Solicit Codes are not mailed. We recommend
that you use Finder Numbers in your mailing, pre-populated onto your donation form or reply
envelope. This will help to ensure that all donations are correctly attributed to the appeal.
If you are working with a small budget, consider mailing UK constituents only. International postage
is expensive and post in some countries can take months to be delivered. You should also consider
different cultures and how they respond to fundraising appeals.
5. Planning and resources
There is a scheduling sheet at the end of this document that may help you with your planning.
Ideally, you should schedule 6 months to deliver a Direct Mail - regardless of how much time you
have to spend on it. This is because there are lots of external factors that will influence timeframes
such as the sign-off process, design, printing and fulfilment.
When planning your budget, the main costs are the designers, printers and mailing house/postage
costs. We recommend shopping around to find the best quote, and asking around the collegiate
University for recommendations (check the Advancing Oxford shared resources for ideas).
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6. Designing your mail pack
As a minimum, you will typically need a letter (containing the ‘ask’) and a donation form. You may
wish to include a reply envelope (postage paid is UK only), and a brochure or leaflet. You may also
want your appeal to have messaging on the outside of the envelope, but we recommend you speak
to a mailing house before doing this as some parts of the envelope have to be kept as white space.
All mailings from the University should use the Oxford Thinking Campaign branding guidelines. They
should also contain the DARS Data Protection Statement. The Individual Giving team can advise on
these elements. Other key things to consider when preparing your mail pack are:







Translate your case for support into the perspective of your intended audience – this may
mean you desire/require different versions of your mail pack for different types of recipient,
subject to your budget. This is where data segmentation can prove invaluable.
Be clear on what you want the potential donor to do. Put your donor at the centre so that
they are both inspired and clear about the impact of their support.
Your document needs a hook (e.g. a surprising fact). A captivating story or a question or an
invitation to get involved can work well as an introduction. It has been stated that the first 8
seconds (c.30 words) will likely determine if the person will read on any further.
Don't be afraid to keep it simple, even though this may naturally meet some resistance,
especially given the fact that we work in academia.
Show them the impact, don't tell – the University is world-leading vs. 20% increase in
international students... Stories or quotes can do this for you.
Thank existing donors for their previous support – acknowledge their past contributions.
The physical appearance of the document is important – it can be effective to place key
information in the top left of a page for example.
7. Seven common mistakes of a Direct Mail
It is very easy to lose perspective when producing a mailing. Here are the seven most common
mistakes that are found on mailings to help you avoid them:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
vii.
Internalised: Avoid jargon, think donor-centred. Don’t write about the problems – inspire
them with how they can help with solutions.
Complicated: Do not make them work to find meaning – make it a joy to read.
Symbolic: Be careful with your messaging – is it too clever? Don't promise things you can't
promise, but show what you have achieved/impact you have already made.
Boring: Focus on a simple proposition and on giving the reader an emotional impact.
Impersonal: Make the donor the hero of your story – talking about thousands of other
people may make them feel like they won’t make a difference.
Vague: Consider who am I talking to, what am I asking them to do, why am I asking them?
Clichéd: Try not to use 'just…' or 'only…' ‘…£X a month’ and don’t say ‘every little helps’!
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8. Your mailing is sent – what next?
Getting the mailing to the stage of printing is not the end. If you have not done so already, you need
to be thinking about the next steps. Here is a quick check list of things to take into consideration:
 Is Gift Registry aware of your mailing and of which fund(s) to allocate donations to?
 Have you drafted a thank you letter and imported it to DARS? Who is the signatory? Who is
responsible for thanking? Do you have a broader stewardship plan in place for your donors?
 Do you need to communicate key information out to your department? Is there an FAQs
document for enquiries?
 After the mailing has landed, who is responsible for dealing with enquiries and returned
mail? These returned mail changes should be documented on DARS.
 What information will you be asked to report on? Have you set up queries in DARS to give
KPIs to monitor progress?
 Have you updated your website and your Campaign website giving page to reflect the
mailing and give further information about the appeal?
 Have you documented the process and written an analysis to help you in future years?
Provided overleaf is a template schedule sheet to further help you with your initial planning. Contact
the Individual Giving team at annual.giving@devoff.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions.
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Set-up
Draft case for support
Initial discussions with UODO and Head of
department
Book in designers, printers, mail house
Complete fundraising communication
planning form
Budgets finalised
Case for Support and Appeal leaflet
Interviews with relevant
staff/students/academics
Initial documents, quotes, and images
collected
Case for support developed
Sign-off Process
Cover letter and donation forms
First draft of cover letter
Signatories for letters decided
Donation form request form completed
Donation form design
Cover letter design (not content)
Letter design sign-off
Design and Print
Send over initial data and gain quotes
Design of all elements including envelopes
All design files to printers
All items printed
Transfer to mailing house
Data and DARS
Initial data selection and segmentation
Segmentation development
Initial segment figures
Further segmentation
Segments finalised
Marketing Efforts established
Marketing Efforts checked
Data finalised and extracted, Marketing
Efforts activated
Data sent to mailing house
Communication and donation process
Send final mail pack to all involved parties
Creation of FAQs
Online Giving Request form completed
Gift Registry notified
Online Giving set-up
Process for returns established
Mailing dates and post-mailing activity
Letters and donation forms merged
Matching and packaging
Mailing posted
Mailing lands
Managing enquiries and thanking commences
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