Your Future Is In The Cards: Why Lists Matter To Creative Published in FundRaising Sucess® March, 2007 By Willis Turner willis@huntsinger-jeffer.com

There’s a powerful, woefully underused fundraising weapon that should be in every copywriter’s and art director’s arsenal.

It can help you target your creative more effectively, have a better feel for the prospects you’re talking to, and, in all likelihood, do a much better job of motivating them to make a gift.

This powerful tool is so simple I can name it for you in just two words: Data Card.

If you’re not familiar with them, Data Cards are the one or two page crib sheets your Account Executive and List Broker use to determine which lists to test.

After the testing phase, lists that have proven themselves effective in acquisition become Control or Continuation Lists, i.e., lists to which acquisition control packages continue to be mailed.

Continuation Lists can give you, as a writer or art director, a lot more information than you might think to help shape your creative.

For example: say you’re prospecting for a health care group that serves cancer patients.

Your AE and list broker have tested many lists and established a group of Continuation Lists that have been rolled out into general acquisition. One of these is the Harvard Health Letter and the Tufts University Health And Nutrition Letter.

Take a look at their data card:

Writing to the List

This information lets us do much more than just make the normal assumption about nonprofit donors. For example, 82 percent of these prospects are college educated, nearly triple the national average.

That they are predominately female is no surprise to fundraisers, but the fact that 80 percent exercise or play sports regularly, again sets them apart from the sedentary majority of Americans in their age group.

From a copy standpoint, that tells us at least two things we can use.

First, these prospects are educated enough to want a fair amount of information about the cause. So in addition to employing high emotion and urgency, we’ll want to give them solid information about the organization. Facts and figures to back up what we say. Second, they are also concerned about their own health, so it could be a good idea to use some (very subtle!) language to remind them of their own vulnerability… that they or someone they love may need this kind of help themselves.

We also discovered that 72 percent of the Harvard Health Letter’s readers are age 55 and up, mere youngsters in the fundraising scheme of things. Now a 2005 study published by the AFP, as well as lots of other research data, has shown that these boomer-generation donors differ from their older counterparts in a number of important ways.

One of the most important is that this group “plan(s) on giving more in the future. In contrast, older donors in pre-boomer generations were more likely to reduce their giving in the future.”

As a creative expert, you know this is a signal to start building in a lot of cultivation-type language. With these prospects you definitely want to set the stage for long-term relationships. Make it easy to pitch a sustainer program after their initial gift. Lay the groundwork for planned gifts.

Best-Package-Best-List

Starting to see the potential for paying attention to lists? Now you can take this idea to it’s next logical level by creating a Best-Package-Best-List strategy. It takes some time, but with aggressive testing you will be able to discover which types of packages work best with which types of lists.

The key is accurate and detailed results analysis. By working closely with your AE and list broker you can build profiles of the prospects who are most responsive to certain kinds of lists.

This opens the door to a whole new host of creative opportunities. With this information you can begin crafting multiple control packages, each tailored to a certain profile. Think how this can expand the influence – and the fundraising power – of an organization!

These examples just scratch the surface. You can see that data cards offer a wealth of information. Facts you can use to add emotional and persuasive nuances to your copy and design. Facts that can help you better understand whom you’re talking to, and help you find more effective ways to influence them.

©2007 Huntsinger & Jeffer, Richmond, VA 
Willis Turner is a senior writer at Huntsinger & Jeffer in Richmond, VA.
You can e-mail him at willis@huntsinger-jeffer.com