Go ahead and take one - they're free

At this time of year many of us print or more accurately mail a holiday appeal. In keeping with the spirit of the season, this often includes a freemium. That encompasses a wide range of possibilities, be it a calendar, notepad, cards, mailing or present labels, some combination of these or maybe something bigger and more expensive.

For many folks, this process started back in June or July with image selection, printing specs and quotes and may just now be wrapping up with the completion of final segments. I am also going to assume that you expect substantial return from the appeal utilizing these items. I know that in my office we see around $200,000 a year in return from our President's Christmas appeal including the university calendar.

My thought is that we need to provide as many related items as possible using these efforts. For instance, we print a full color 12 month calendar each year and mail it to recent donors along with major gift prospects and select individuals chosen by contact staff and the president's office. I had those same, approved, captioned images turned into a screen saver, desktop wallpaper and a one page wall calendar. The digital version will be added to the calendar year end solicitations (well a link to download them) as a no cost, easy additional item, adding some value to my email. The single page calendar will be mailed to the balance of the donor ever file the week between christmas and new years with the expectation that it will arrive in mailboxes the first week of January carrying a message of give now to an audience that is outside of my year end group and hopefully beating the holiday bills into the donors hands.

Each of these are easy items to create with low cost and flow easily in the process from their more visible and expensive calendar cousin. In addition, it allows me to maximize the eyeballs on and value of those images that we are espousing as representative of the university in a productive way.