Learn more about analytics and research best practices, as well as real world examples and solutions for nonprofits.

Optimizing the Demise (Part 2)

Yesterday we posted the first of our five part series on Optimizing the Demise, if you missed it, click here to read. Today we offer you the second practical idea for how to optimize the decline in your direct mail fundraising program:

Stop direct mail testing – at least in acquisition. Look, even if you test something that doubles response (which is rarer than a supermodel on a Metro bus), lifting response rates from a 0.44% to a 0.88% isn’t going to save your organization. Better to redirect the budget and ideas set aside for testing to try new things that might have a longer payoff.

This idea won’t change the course of the direct mail trend. But it will buy you some time while we are all figuring out the next big thing.

The Regression to the Mean has Begun

by Bill Jacobs | May 31, 2021

A year ago, all of us in the business of fundraising were nervous. Lockdowns were taking place across the world, there were shortages of toilet paper and no one was sure how donors would respond. No one could have predicted that donors would respond in a such an...

December 31 Emails

by Bill Jacobs | Jan 7, 2021

This past year, we tracked email solicitations for both Giving Tuesday and December 31 (your can read about Giving Tuesday here: https://www.analyticalones.com/giving-spam-tuesday/). We wanted to compare these two critical days of email fundraising. Here are some...

Giving (SPAM) Tuesday

by Bill Jacobs | Dec 3, 2020

This year, the whole Analytical Ones’ team tracked our the number of emails we received from organizations, how many we received, our relationship with the organization (active donor, lapsed donor or new donor acquisition), and, when we received the email. Here is...