Happy New Year! It’s time to make some direct response fundraising resolutions. Here are a few of ours at the Harrington Agency:

1.    Adding digital printing to the arsenal. With longer lead times for offset printing, digital printing can shorten your schedules, giving you more time to produce a timely and heavily versioned/personalized package. There are some downsides – for large quantities it can be more expensive, sometimes the print quality isn’t as strong, there are some papers and techniques that aren’t feasible with digital printing, and it may be difficult to reproduce brand colors.

2.    Diversifying our clients’ digital advertising budget. Since the introduction of iOS14, over 90% of consumers have opted out of data tracking – making a lot of Facebook campaigns less effective. Saw an increase in your FB campaigns at year-end?  👏👏 You’re bucking the trend. And, there are still ways to create strong Facebook campaigns, but our priority resolution is diversifying the budget.

3.    Planning for direct mail cost increases. You’ve probably already seen the higher-than-usual increases for paper and lettershop. Until the supply chain issues resolve themselves, they are likely not over. And don’t forget that USPS is planning on moving to two rate increases per year.

4.    Continuing to eliminate open rates as a key email metric ❌. Open rates were never 100% accurate and with iOS15, they are even less so. The impact on open rates hasn’t been as dramatic as some predicted, but open rates have increased, and it makes a/b testing of senders or subject lines difficult. Our resolution is to continue to show open rates, but not use them to gauge success.

5.    Staying in touch with our caging and keying vendors. These providers have been hit particularly hard by staffing shortages and changing their operations due to COVID. Make sure you know if mail returns are backing up and work with them on how to alleviate the keying delays.

6.    Re-evaluating our email program to drive more clicks. Engagement has always been a critical factor in deliverability. Now click-through-rates are even more crucial to determining an email’s success. We’re reviewing email design, content, and calls-to-action to increase CTRs.

7.    Monitoring mail delivery. As we know, the USPS changed the first-class delivery window to 3-5 days. At times, we’re seeing even longer delivery times for both first- and third-class. Some of this is due to changes in the USPS process, but a lot of it has to do with trucking. The USPS is now relying heavily on trucking (as opposed to via air) and the trucking industry has taken a huge hit because of COVID.

8.    Incorporating texting as part of our regular fundraising program. SMS CTRs can be 15%+ higher than email and 60%+ of consumers consider texting their first or second favorite channels. Our goal is to integrate texting in not just fundraising campaigns, but engagement and stewardship as well.

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PLUS ONE: And, personally, one of my personal resolutions: “connect with empathy, lead with compassion” (Harvard Business Review, December 2021). It’s been incredibly stressful these last years—every one of us has been impacted by COVID, the lack of personal connection, stress and anxiety. The toll these last years have taken on our mental and physical health cannot be underestimated. My goal for 2022 is to listen more, offer as much practical support as I can, and understand and respect that everyone’s experience has been different. In 2022, my question will change from “how can we troubleshoot this?” to “how can I help?”.

Anyone have other resolutions to add to the list?