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Although smaller nonprofit organizations have to initiate campaigns with smaller budgets, there are strategies that can be used to ensure savings on direct mail for non profits. We will discuss two strategies to help make a smaller budget achieve more. These strategies help save money and get you more bang for your buck, including unbranding and print planning.

Stripping Away the Branding Fluff

Sprinkling company plugs throughout your marketing materials has become second nature. However, this can be detrimental to the campaign’s success because people are hyper-aware when they encounter a marketing message. In “Pull the Plug The Value of Unbranded Content,” they say that if the target consumer does read on, they do so with a filter. They know that whatever they read next is subjective and is meant to be persuasive. This can affect your results, and lead to a campaign with undesirable data, diminishing your ROI.

To keep this from happening with your target audience, you can strip away all marketing identification. According to Joe Boland’s article “20 Big Ideas for Small Nonprofits,” the Southern Environmental Law Center tried sending their materials in a blank envelope with just the recipient’s information. This proved to be an effective strategy and allowed them to keep their costs down.  

Print Everything All At Once  

Many companies overlook the benefits of printing as many things as they can at the same time.  If you are printing multiple versions of a four-color brochure, you can save costs by using the same press sheet. Just make sure to be as detailed as possible when you send out your project for a quote. This will allow your printer to plan accordingly, which will help cut down on the number of plate changes and make-readies.

Now, to put your potential savings into perspective, let’s take a look at some numbers. In Joe Boland’s article, he  cited a real life example that details how much money a client ended up saving. The client had two acquisition mailings of 25,000 pieces. If they had printed them separately, they would have cost $7,198 each in comparison to $6,146 if they were printed together. That was an 8.7 percent decrease in cost per donor, from $81 to $74.

Repeat Direct Mail for Non Profits’ Success Stories

Keep in mind that these two ideas are meant to reduce your direct mail costs. However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore the results. Always make sure to check your data against the costs of a campaign so you can better optimize your next initiative to reach your desired goals within your budget. If you are unsure how to approach your next direct mail campaign, consider working with One Stop Mail so you can write a new success story and overcome your financial limitations.  

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