Salem One recently attended the 17^th annual Bridge Conference in Washington, DC.  The conference is made up of nonprofit fundraising professionals, leadership, and other marketing professionals.  The three-day event covered integrated marketing, fundraising strategies and techniques for non-profits to engage constituents.

One of the big topics at this year’s Bridge Conference was co-operative data. Co-op data is a data set that comes from a 3^rd party vendor, but can be custom tailored to best match your donor base profile. (Know your donor!) By using your past history of donors, demographics and other key characteristics of your donors (or lapsed donors), co-operative data matching canbest provide you with similar new donors, based on their interests and giving causes. This is not just a list, but real time giving history from possible new donors to your organization.  In order to access co-op data an organization must share their data and donor giving history.

Non-profits arerecognizing the value of the combination of integrating direct mail and digital outreach. “Co-targeting” audiences in both offline direct mail and digital ads at the same time can improve lift on response and average donation. Having the direct mail and digital ads complementary in design is the best strategy as it creates continuity in branding and recognition. Statistics continue to show direct mail is a significant source of fundraising dollars, but often when coupled with digital the average gift increases.

Several sessions reinforced the idea of using QR codes as part of any print a non-profit may do. Being creative with the QR code and the content behind it can increase donor attention, especially when used with video. (Not to mention the USPS offers seasonal discount postage promotion for use of a QR code.) QR codes can be used to take the donor directly to your giving page, website, provide directions, or augmented reality. When set up properly QR codes can be tracked, so you can see where your visitors to your landing content originate.

Test and measure everything! Test your current campaign. Know your response rate, average gift amount, and your ROI. Use this information as a benchmark as you try new mail campaigns. When you start to test, make sure you maintain your control package so as you make changes you can track what creates improve. Keep track of the results and use that data when creating future campaigns.

Salem One continues to keep ourselves on the leading edge of trends in industries in which we service. This conference helped reassure the efforts put forth recently in bringing together physical mail and digital outreach. With our expertise we were able to actively participate in several sessions drawing additional perspective and value to the discussion.

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