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Overkill Marketing

Or, "How to Get Your Prospects to Tune You Out Without Really Trying"

by John Foster and Viken Mikaelian Originally published in the Journal of Gift Planning A publication of the National Commitee on Planned Giving December 2004   A "Must-Read" Article!

Which trend are you following?

Today, the Internet is offering planned giving officers new and exciting opportunities to increase the marketing of their programs. At the same time, boards, VP’s and fundraising managers are imposing evermore stringent requirements on PGO’s for efficiency and accountability. It’s a good time to reflect that sometimes, working harder means that we’re working against ourselves.

What do the mavens of planned giving promotion (the authors included) emphasize in every presentation you attend? Market aggressively.

"Stay in their faces!" we say. "Market more to keep their attention!"

We do believe that this is sound advice. It can, however, be taken too far, often by planned giving officers who are approaching their jobs with the best of intentions. The idea that no program is so successful that it cannot be improved with one more newsletter or a more effusive handwritten note clipped to the quarterly income check, takes generic marketing advice to a self-defeating extreme, and can significantly impact an organization’s performance.

A determined fundraiser armed with today’s arsenal of marketing techniques and a Send key runs the risk of seriously wearing out her welcome with her constituency. And alienated prospects mean declining response rates and fewer gifts closed.

That is overkill marketing. In this article we will examine this phenomenon, and show you how to avoid its pitfalls through a smarter, mission-driven marketing approach.

Reality Check

Just as there is overkill marketing, there is also "underkill marketing" -- the too little, too late approach to promotion. One tired newsletter a year? A website that hasn’t been updated since 2000? No organization intends it, but some seem to use it just the same.

Worst is no marketing at all. It’s surprising how often the authors hear, "We’re not ready for planned giving yet." These are the dinosaur development shops, being outflanked by their more nimble and farsighted competition.

The challenge for today’s savvy planned giving officer is to find the balance that her prospects want between too many contacts and too few, too much gift information and too little.

How Do We Get Their Attention?

It’s ironic that after 35 years of creative and successful promotion by charities, marketing consultants, and some far-sighted for-profit colleagues (not to mention a further fifty years of groundwork laid by the pioneering PG shops), the planned giving industry is still unsure about what prospects hear and how they respond.

We’ve gotten the basic message across. In 1969, few donors of average means believed that they could make a significant gift to their favorite charity except through a multi-year cash pledge. By 2004, our profession has educated two generations of donors about the creative giving tools that lie within their grasp.

Still, while we’ve codified our marketing approaches, surveyed our donors, cribbed each other’s successful ads -- we’re not exactly sure whether most planned gifts are made because the PGO has convinced the donor to make one, or because the donor has decided that a gift now makes sense in her overall financial picture.

If the latter motivation induces even half of our gifts, then we need to maintain a steady level of gift-planning awareness in our prospects, even though it’s unlikely we’ll have many short-term results to show for it. Rather, our hope is that when a prospect is ready, he’ll remember us. In an advertising and marketing context, this means that we must broadcast the benefits of planned gifts to a fairly wide audience, in fairly general terms, on a fairly regular basis, and do it year-in and year-out.

Unfortunately, that is hardly the basis for world-beating creativity. It can also engender a self-defeating "send them anything" approach to maintaining contact with prospects.

The Wrong Stuff

If a planned giving officer has nothing new, exciting, or relevant to her institution to tell her prospects about, she is understandably tempted to maintain contact by sending them whatever is at hand. Estate planning tips, detailed tax analysis of the lead trust, lacrosse team results —anything, just as long as the newsletter or e-mail has her name and phone number at the bottom.

But that kind of material is what we call the wrong stuff — well-meaning but banal, impersonal, and/or intrusive contacts. This is one situation in which more is not necessarily better.

Remember, planned giving officers market a service that most of their prospects quite naturally don’t want to think about — permanent transfer of significant assets away from the control of the prospects or their families. Even our simplest promotion ("Remember us in your will") requires effort on the prospect’s part — contemplation of their mortality and making plans for their demise — that induces procrastination in most individuals. Who wants to be reminded of the Grim Reaper?

Yes, in such a marketing situation, patient repetition of the message is essential. But prospects will ultimately respond if that message has been telling them why they should make a significant gift to your organization. They won’t be swayed by chaff.

So we walk a fine line in marketing our programs on an ongoing basis. Just how often do our prospects want to hear from us? What do they want to hear? Is it possible that too many contacts can make prospects stop listening?

Remember the "Friend-Raiser"?

The planned giving officer shouldn’t only worry about overwhelming his external audience with his marketing efforts. As fundraising is managed today, he also faces internal pressure from his boss, who is measuring work against results as never before.

You may have once shared an office with a colleague who asserted that his job was "friend-raising" for your institution. He traveled steadily, on the delightful mission of "getting them ready for the ask." He’d often visit prospects for years on end, thanking them for previous commitments, updating them on organizational happenings — never asking for a new gift.

But the friend-raiser couldn’t adapt when a new VP arrived, and began demanding that Development Office efforts lead to gift totals.

That same requirement for productivity will influence your VP as she reviews the marketing section of your year-end report. Yes, you sent out more Estate Planning Guides, and began blasting e-mails to the prospect list. But, she asks, how many of those increased contacts produced leads?

Your Enemy Is an Overstuffed Mailbox

In a 2001 article in the Journal of Gift Planning, planned giving marketing expert Reine Shiffman wrote, "Competition among charities for planned gift dollars is rampant – even smaller organizations are getting into the fray. Today’s donor is barraged by an array of brochures, newsletters, and appeal letters. And, if that’s not enough, the age of technology adds to the confusion, with new and improved methods of delivery. People in the United States are hit with 5,000 branding messages a day! In response, donors are becoming more selective than ever — and with higher expectations."

Consider how you approach the clutter of voices and messages that are delivered to you. You probably choose communications from the organizations you most closely support, or from a vendor offering the best deal. In other words, you choose the piece that says something special to you. The rest remain in the pile for your future attention – if you ever get back to them.

Remember that your prospects are wading through a similar flood themselves. As a result, your program’s voice and message can get drowned out, put aside, thrown away. As the amount of unsolicited direct mail grows, traditional planned giving mailings face increasing competition -- and dull, impersonal ones face the discard.

Frequency of contact alone won’t grab their attention — what’s crucial is content.

 

A planned giving officer’s indifference or inattention can quickly compromise content quality. Shopworn materials such as endlessly recycled and uncreative ad series or straight-from-the-assembly-line newsletters (or a website that has gone unrefreshed for several years) may deliver the gift-planning message to your prospects. But the staleness will cause the recipients to tune out.

It’s how to alienate your prospects without really trying.

The Book that Nobody Reads

How can you regularly send your prospects a consistent message (Planning your gift increases the benefits for you and for us) in fresh ways that will continue to get their attention? Try thinking outside the newsletter for starters.

Mixing postcards into your other mailings capitalizes on a medium that is attention-grabbing, compelling, and cost-effective. It’s a way to work smarter by using new techniques.

Postcards offer bold, arresting print communication. They carry a simpler, punchier message for a more focused impact than that of a traditional newsletter. They do not require opening, as larger and more complex mailings do. Not only are postcards easier to read, they’re also more likely to be read. (Consider: a well designed and written postcard can get its message across to the recipient even as it’s being thrown away.)

In addition, postcards are cheaper and easier to produce and mail than newsletters.

 

Tips: One gift-planning topic per postcard. Work on the headline — a vague phrase won’t attract reader interest. Use of humor and illustrations/photos boosts effectiveness. Make the headline, copy and illustration work together to reinforce the card’s message.

This postcard creatively poses a teasing question, and draws the recipient to turn it over to read the answer.

Using such postcards as a tool to promote your program represents a smarter approach to print marketing – an approach that separates you from the inbox crowd and gets your message read and considered by your constituency.

 

Don’t Forget the Old-Fashioned Letter

Consider the benefits of another non-traditional mailing. "Many people like old-fashioned letters and prefer to get snail mail in their boxes instead of bills," says Michael Robinson, IT Director for Creative Direct Response International (a direct mail agency working exclusively with nonprofits in North America).

Skeptical? Stephen Hitchcock of Mal Warwick & Associates writes, "Doesn’t almost everyone who receives direct mail appeals know that thousands of people are receiving the identical letter? That what they’re holding isn’t a personal correspondence? So why is it important to engage in some ruse that the letter IS personal correspondence, even to the extent of using a courier typeface? What, in heaven’s name, is the rationale — merely custom and convention? ...You’re absolutely right. The rationale is custom and convention."

The good news: According to AFPNET.NET, "In a survey of 2,000 adults, 59 percent of donors said they were most likely to donate to an organization that they received direct mail from. In addition, 53 percent said they read fundraising and nonprofit direct mail in 2003.

"The survey, Customer Focus 2003: Nonprofit, was conducted by Vertis, a marketing and advertising firm headquartered in Baltimore and was released Aug. 12. Findings also showed that personalized mail is the most important factor when donors decide which charity or fundraising mail they open, at 62 percent..."

An old-fashioned, one- or two-page letter gives you the room to get a gift-planning message across in depth, and in a venue that seems personal to the recipient. It’s a great way to roll out an endowment campaign or a drive for more bequests. A letter is one marketing medium where more content works: the recipient settles back, and you tell her about your new gift annuity program or invite her to join the Heritage Society.

(The PGO considering such a letter should first familiarize herself with the branch of marketing science devoted to optimum ways to compose and package direct mail. As an example, readership and response is reported to decline in some instances if a brochure is enclosed with the letter.)

Finding the Frequency

So now you’re adding postcards and personalized letters to your existing cycle of newsletter

mailings. Won’t your recipients get tired of hearing from you? How much is too much?

The right number of marketing pieces per year? Evidence indicates that 6-10 mailings a year strikes an effective balance between too much and too little contact. (When PGO’s conclude that direct mail does not work, it may be because they haven’t tried it often enough.)

Remember, though, that each of those contacts has to be clear, focused, and related to your needs and goals in order to be effective. It’s what we call mission-based marketing, which we’ll discuss shortly.

In addition, while it’s important not to give up after a few mailings, it’s also essential to evaluate response, to gauge which types of mailings and what message tones get the best response from your constituency.

Sharpening Your Newsletter’s Impact

For most planned giving operations, newsletters have been the primary tool of forging long-term bonds with prospects. It is important to maintain such a valued ambassador.

It’s also important, however, to review the look and content of your newsletter, especially given the quality of other periodicals arriving in your prospects’ mailboxes. As reference points, consider mass-market magazines and the newsletters circulated by banks and investment firms.

Consider how mass-market magazines are monitoring the length of articles and enlivening them with graphic touches. Think of the features that focus on how a development in the news affects the reader personally. Look at the production quality of an investment firm’s market report, and the authoritative tone of its articles.

Your planned giving newsletter is obviously received by its readers with different expectations than they bring to these publications. Nevertheless, as the design and content of other print media continue to evolve, your publication may be looking dated and uninviting to your prospects.

So stay ahead of the curve with your newsletter. Watch out for huge, uninviting blocks of print. Add charts and examples to pieces reporting tax developments, and illustrate how such changes will help a donor make a creative gift. Avoid the generic tone — speak specifically and personally about your institution, its donors, and its fundraising goals and gift opportunities.

Increase Your Buying Power

Are you committing your scarce budget dollars to a once- or twice-per-year mailing to and entire prospect/suspect/membership list? You will get a higher response rate, and a larger overall response, if you cut down your mailing list, and allocate the remaining funds for additional direct mail campaigns.

 

 

It’s No Different on the Web

The same principles that determine effectiveness in print materials apply to the Internet as well. Your prospects’ e-mail inboxes are probably more crowded today than their home mailboxes, and the same dynamics drive the read/delete decisions. Overkill marketing on the Web will alienate them just the same as in print.

 

Internet Momentum, Continued

A recent survey concludes (seniorjournal.com, quoting The Pew Internet & American Life Project):

• Seniors citizens on Internet jumped 47 percent since 2000
• 22% of Americans age 65 and older go online
• 58% of Americans age 50-64 are online

By the end of 2003:

• 66% of wired seniors had done product research online
• 66% of wired seniors had looked for health or medical information online
• 47% of online seniors had bought something on the Internet

Note: These numbers are likely to be higher among the well educated and the well-to-do.

Why Do They Visit Your Website?

A prospect comes to your planned giving website in one of three ways:

1. She is guided there by engaging references placed throughout your organization’s site that tell her how a planned gift can help her help you ("The research was funded by a gift that returned income to the donor — to learn more about similar ways you can help the Hospital, click here.") — Not just a button reading Planned Giving!

2. She (or her advisor) goes purposely to the planned giving site to get details on specific gift options she is already considering; or

3. She is purposely directed by the PGO to visit the website after a call or an email exchange (What a convenient tool — just forward the URL!)

The prospect interacts with the site, decides whether or not to contact the PGO for further gift discussions, and leaves.

Studies show that most people do not bookmark planned giving websites. Internet users return regularly to a limited number of websites or chat rooms that relate directly to their interests — health, finance, faith, hobbies, etc. They want to keep current on those interests.

If readers are interested in estate or financial planning, they visit one of many professional sites specializing in those topics. A reader may bookmark your organization’s overall site if he is particularly interested in its mission or activities. Occasionally, readers may click to your planned giving pages if they are motivated to do so, but they won’t return regularly to read financial updates — they’re getting that information already on business sites they already patronize.

Therefore: You’re not using your time productively if you are regularly adding ancillary articles to try to draw visitors back to your planned giving website.

Personalizing Your Website

How to make a visit to your planned giving site a useful and meaningful one for the prospect? First, guide her there by intriguing links throughout your organization’s overall site (and not just buttons labeled "planned giving" — use inviting action phrases like, "Read how this book fund was established through a bequest.")

Check your website’s balance between generic gift data and personal communication. Is there a welcome on the home page? Is the gift planning staff pictured? Do gift descriptions refer to "the non-profit" or to your organization by its real name?

Fundraisers acknowledge that donor testimonials lead to second time gifts and motivate others to give. (Adam Corson-Finnerty, Fundraising and Friend-Raising on the Web (ALA Editions, 1998). Are you profiling real donors with their real stories? Or are they fictitious accounts, illustrated with stock images bought from an agency (who has also placed the same photo on a local billboard advertising a retirement home)?

Your Enemy is an Overstuffed Inbox

Today, the Web offers fundraisers the tempting opportunity to automatically send marketing material to long lists of e-mail addresses. What a boon for a harried PGO whose boss is telling him to get out of the office more: with the push of a button, he’s contacted 1,500 prospects.

But from the prospects’ point of view, these unsolicited messages are coming with mechanical frequency – which sounds like spam, doesn’t it?

Consider your reaction as a recipient. You’re busy, you weren’t waiting for this e-mail, so the temptation is to delete it immediately. How many others just like it do you put aside to read later, then clear out, still unread, at the end of the week?

Your prospects are likely to be unmoved by such messages from you as well. They will be tempted to reach for the delete key and tune you out. A time-saving communication device for you strikes them as an irrelevant intrusion — another case of a fundraiser working harder, only to work against himself.

 

You can’t hide behind content

Are you sending more messages and getting less response? The reason may be that your prospects feel like they’re hearing from your library and not from you. E-newsletters, an increasingly popular marketing product available to the planned giving industry, provide an excellent example of how this works.

Donor e-newsletters are publications automatically mass e-mailed to your prospects on a regular basis, sometimes as often as weekly. While some institutions produce e-newsletters in-house, most contract out for services. These communications can feature a header and footer personalized for each program, wrapping content provided by the vendor.

It sounds like a great way to harness the power of the Internet to increase visibility of your program, but it’s really overkill marketing. Packaging generic gift-planning and investment advice in electronic format doesn’t prevent prospects for recognizing it for what it is.

Canned content has to be "cookie-cutter" generic if it is to be plugged into e-newsletters for multiple organizations. Regardless of how much well-written information is provided, on the receiving end your prospects will notice not only that the content is being duplicated in other organization’s e-mails, but also that it’s dry and unrelated to your organization. That’s when you will lose their attention.

Prospects aren’t oblivious, and you don’t want them to be. Your most powerful arguments in favor of their giving engage them personally and intimately. The mind of the donor is where the marketing battle is won. It won’t be won with stale marketing messages or boring materials.

 

 

 

 

 

Whose Specialty Is This, Anyway?

Consider the following: Major institutions in the financial industry provide investment advice and turn profits for their investors better than anybody else. So when you send canned financial-planning materials to your prospects, you’re competing with those specialty institutions on their home turf. That’s not an efficient use of your resources.

Why take on the giants when your institution already possesses a unique advantage over them? Your organization enjoys a special relationship with your prospects, and you can harness the power of this relationship by means of mission-driven messages in both Internet and print marketing.

Mission-driven vs. Information-driven

For fundraising professionals, understanding this distinction is crucial. It reveals the fundamental flaw in relying too heavily on automated marketing products:

 

Mission-driven marketing

• Focuses on your organization’s unique relationship with its prospects;
• Keeps your planned giving message personal: "You value our work, and want us to continue serving far into the future. Here are our long-term needs. Your gift will enable us to advance the goals that we support together. You will be making a difference in the lives of those we serve."
• Still offers accurate financial and planning information your constituency needs to consider a gift.

 

Information-driven marketing

• Reduces your message to generic gift, planning, or investment advice available elsewhere;
• Separates marketing messages from the prospects’ sense of identity with your organization; and
• Limits your communication to gift features already being advertised by other non-profits.

In today’s competitive planned-giving environment, mission-driven marketing simply works better. It leverages the advantages your institution already possesses in order to seize your prospects’ attention and emotions. Efficiency plus better results equals a robust formula for success.

An information-driven approach loses marketing value because of its mechanical, impersonal, and generic nature. It dilutes quality with quantity in the name of convenience, and drives prospects to tune out.

A mission-driven approach, on the other hand, succeeds because it trumps quantity with a unique, compelling, campaign-specific message. It enables fundraisers to engage their prospects on a personal level. Moreover, prospects see genuine communication from their favored institution, not general-distribution marketing product. So their minds are open to receiving the message, the message about how a planned gift can help them make a difference at the organization they care about.

Remember: sell the benefits, not the features of your program. Or, as Elmer Wheeler said in the 30’s, Sell the sizzle, not the steak.

 

 

Fundraising Marketers Walk the Line

When you contact your prospects too often with too much generic, impersonal content, making them tune you out, you are committing overkill marketing in the first degree. Even if you and your staff exhaust yourselves in the process, the unintended result is that you will be working against yourselves. (Underperforming programs that don’t do enough to cultivate their constituency are practicing underkill, and will also be frustrated by their results.)

We believe that sending too much of the wrong stuff to your prospects will decrease response, and result in fewer and smaller gifts. Instead, we propose sending messages that sound like you and your organization, just as often as you have something to say.

The planned giving programs who get the difference should succeed in the increasingly crowded marketplace. They can take advantage of the great potential offered by Internet and other technologies, while being guided by a mission-based approach that influences their simplest donor letter. Their marketing objective — both in print and on the Web — is to engage their prospects on a compelling, personal level. The resulting communication increases response rates and makes prospects more receptive to the planned giving officer’s follow-up to close a gift.

Best of all, these fundraisers are doing their jobs it in the most efficient manner possible, by leveraging their strengths and working smarter, not harder.