It's the conversation that matters

So many of the things that we do require a focus on the masses and getting the case for support and an ask in front of as many folks as we can knowing that our response rates will be pretty consistent from year to year based upon consistency and recency of our donors giving. Because we are having multiple dialogues with hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands depending upon the size of our constituent bases, it is easy to forget that our constituents are only having 1 conversation with us.

Take a step back from your need to get this months phone completed in time to send next months calendar year end letter and follow up email and look at how they read when placed into a direct string of communications. If you reached the constituent on the phone, did you recognize that in the letter? Does your letter continue the conversation or start it again fresh? Does your year end email assume that they read the letter or assume that they didn't? Did you remember the phone call that the alum and one of your students had in November when you wrote the email? You can be that your alum does.

The next generation of communications and personalization is knowing when you contacted them and what you said in order to keep the conversation flowing. This is easy to do in the phone and online and much more challenging in direct mail so use that - send an email and follow up with different messages for opens than from those who don't. Create multiple click through opportunities and have different secondary communications based upon actions. Make that phone call but pull out the current status of the prospect record and use that in the mail campaign when you create that letter.

While you can't do exactly the same in mail, you can get a pretty good handle on who opens your mail by looking at historical data - find the folks who have made multiple mail gifts - odds are good they are reading you message. Take the risk of assuming that they read the last one and reference that material directly in your email.

Each of these steps will create lift in the prior appeal results and helps to make an annual solicitation calendar an annual conversation with solicitations in it. This increases the readership of your communications and leads to more gifts, which leads to more conversation opportunities which leads to more gifts... nice hamster wheel to be stuck in!