How to Recover Your Lapsed Direct Mail Donors

By Alan Sharpe (March 2009) E-book  $9.99

Discover the financial rewards, savings and long-term benefits of wooing and winning your donors all over again using direct mail.

Your lapsed donors and lapsed members are a gold mine.  You’ll find hidden nuggets among this group if you take the time and expend  the effort (and money) required to uncover them.

You may be tempted to drop lapsed donors from your mailings, maybe even  delete them from your database. But that is a strategic blunder. Your lapsed donors are worth pursuing for a number of reasons:

• you know that they donate to worthy charities
• you know that they respond to direct mail appeals for funds
• they likely comprise over half of the donors in your house file—you literally cannot afford to overlook them
• once recovered, they tend to make larger donations than new donors do

Your repeated mailings to reactivate lapsed donors will pay off if done properly. The secret is to continue mailing to  this group until the results drop below what you’d achieve (in response rate and average gift) by mailing to cold lists.

This Handbook shows you the financial rewards, savings and long-term benefits of wooing and winning your donors all over again using direct mail.  It’s Handbook Number 22 in the Hands-On Fundraising Series from Andrew Spencer Publishing.

Peek inside the handbook

Learn how to win back old friends

• learn nine excellent reasons for pursuing your lapsed donors
• learn how to tell when a donor has lapsed so you can take immediate action
• discover the vital difference between lapsed donors and former donors, and why you must treat each group differently
• learn the 12 common reasons that donors lapse
• understand the primary reason that donors stop giving (it’s not what most people think it is)
• discover the causes of lapsing that you can control—and those that you can’t
• learn the simple step you can take to avoid mistaking moved donors for lapsed donors

Peek inside the handbook

Discover how to mine the gold in your lapsed donor file

1. why you should not drop lapsed donors from your mailings
2. when to mail your first lapsed donor reactivation mailing
3. how often to mail donors who have not given in years
4. why recovering your lapsed donors is more important than acquiring new donors
5. why asking for a gift alone is insufficient to reactivate most lapsed donors
6. the single thing you must do to win back a lapsed donor
7. how to use surveys to re-inspire donors who have fallen off
8. when to use a hand-written note—and why this works so well
9. a simple postage tactic to boost response
10. why and how you must treat reactivated donors differently after they come back on board

Peek inside the handbook

Learn from a real-world example of a lapsed donor recovery letter

This handbook features a lapsed donor recovery letter mailed by an international non-profit organization. The letter consists of:

• a base letter mailed to all active donors
• a version of the base letter customized for donors who had not given a gift for 12 months
• a version of the base letter customized for donors who had not given a gift for 24 months or longer
• highlighted text so you can see how each letter differs from the base letter, and how it is customized to match the length of the donors lapse in giving

Download this Handbook now. Start reading it—and profiting from its advice and examples—within minutes.

Product Details

Format: E-book in Adobe PDF format for immediate download
Pages: 17
Publisher: Andrew Spencer Publishing
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-9784053-2-8
Dimensions: 8.5 x 11
SKU: sharpe027

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