Nonprofits often struggle to get current and potential donors to open their messages, both on- and offline. There are so many hurdles to clear before they can reach their audiences — short attention spans, pesky spam folders, steep advertising costs. A free U.S. Postal Service tool seeks to integrate mailboxes with inboxes, offering nonprofits a second shot at reaching their audience.
Informed Delivery sends emails to customers who subscribe, allowing them to preview the mail they’ll receive that afternoon. The daily emails mostly show black-and-white scanned images of the envelopes in that day’s mail. But at no cost, charities can upload original full-color, hyperlinked images that supplement their mailing and link to their website.
Some nonprofits are exploring how to use this service to attract donations. The service, which launched in 2017, gives nonprofits a second bite of the apple: Mail recipients who might not open a letter may instead click a link in an Informed Delivery email.
“All of a sudden there’s this whole other universe of people seeing their mail that have actually never seen it before,” says Carolyn Angelini, director of resource and supplier relations at Production Solutions, a direct-mail consultancy.
Early Attempts
It’s too early to know just how generous this new universe is, but charities can roughly determine its size. Using anonymous Postal Service data, nonprofits can identify how many addresses on their mailing list are signed up for Informed Delivery. They can then gauge whether it would be a smart investment to add graphics to Informed Delivery emails.
Trout Unlimited, a fisheries conservation nonprofit, learned that 7 percent of its mailing list received Informed Delivery emails. The charity sent a mail appeal for a donation of $1,500 and added graphics for the Informed Delivery email list. That campaign reached 85,000 mailboxes and 1,500 email inboxes through Informed Delivery.
“I didn’t have much hope because I’d never even heard of [Informed Delivery], and I’m in this business,” says Lori Held, senior director of member support at Trout Unlimited.
The charity’s first foray into this marketing effort exceeded expectations. Seventy-five percent of those who received an Informed Delivery email with the Trout Unlimited graphic opened it. Twenty people clicked on the link in the image to donate. Of those 20 who made it to the donate page, just one person gave — but that single gift was $1,500.
“We were shocked and excited,” Held says.
After that initial success, the charity has continued to run Informed Delivery campaigns, but these follow-up efforts haven’t yielded any donations.
‘Started Off Very Slowly’
ADRA International, a religious humanitarian charity, runs Informed Delivery graphics for all of its monthly mailings. It has pursued this strategy for less than a year and has yet to see any meaningful changes in its direct-mail fundraising.
“It’s started off very slowly,” says Rebecca Coleman, the charity’s annual-giving specialist. “There are some months that we just don’t get anything, and then some months when we’ll get three donations, 10 donations. It hasn’t made a huge impact on anything yet.”
Despite the inconsistent results, Coleman says the costs associated with running Informed Delivery campaigns are low enough to continue using the service. ProList, the mail and marketing company that runs ADRA’s direct-mail program, charges an additional $150 a month for the charity to incorporate Informed Delivery into its mailings. And because the email graphics use the same design as the envelopes, the charity’s freelance designer only needs to resize an existing graphic.
Moreover, Coleman says, the service helps the charity keep in touch with frequent donors who are familiar with its work. “There are people that support your cause, and a lot of times they don’t need to read a whole direct-mail letter,” she says.
While only a small portion of the population has signed up for Informed Delivery, an average of 60 percent of all subscribers open the emails each day, according to the Postal Service. The emails are not a solicitation, they’re an information service that recipients have to opt-in to. Even though these emails help nonprofits reach their mailing list in a new way, they are not a silver bullet. Some fundraisers think the extra step to create graphics and set up a link for Informed Delivery emails is worth it — it’s one more way to keep in touch with potential donors.
“I see it really more as a complement to a traditional campaign, and, if anything, it’s just supporting the message,” says Held. Whether that extra complement makes a difference remains to be seen.
