The Isle of Man Post Office can reduce the cost of direct mail campaigns by up to 30% through its Business Reply Paid service. Here's how...
The charity sector is highly competitive, with a huge number of organisations vying for support. In the UK alone, there are 165,000+ registered charities with a collective annual income of £75 billion. But to engage potential supporters and inspire them to donate, charities must launch campaigns that are compelling and emotive, and this costs money.
Some of the larger charities spend upwards of 25% of their annual income on fundraising, and while this is vital to ensure donations keep coming in, it is a significant expense. In 2017, for example, the Guide Dogs For the Blind Association spent £35 million on fundraising activities, 33% of the total funds it raised during the year.
In most cases, charities will have an entire team dedicated to fundraising and marketing. These experts use a variety of channels to communicate with potential supporters, including television and radio, online and social media, as well as direct mail. The latter is one of the most effective methods of engagement, and has one of the highest response rates of all marketing tools.
According to the Chief Marketing Officers Council, targeted direct mail earns a 4.4% response rate, while email produces a mere 0.12% response rate. What's more, only around 25% of people open emails from non-profit organisations, while the Good Fundraising Guide, published by the Institute of Fundraising, insists that 79% of donations from charities come from direct mail.
Direct mail is a powerful marketing tool for charities, but can require significant spend and investment. That said, it is the area where costs can be easily streamlined to deliver a much higher ROI – after all, the more money that can be saved, the more money that can be diverted to the good causes the charity was set up to support in the first place.
At the Isle of Man Post Office, we can help charitable organisations reduce their fundraising campaign costs by up to 30% through our Integrated Mailing Solutions (IMS) specialist in-house business communications division. We have a proven track record in providing print, postage, scanning and mailing solutions to business and charities for more than 20 years.
Our Business Reply Paid service is competitively priced, and can be used as part of a "banking and thanking" solution that can cut overall campaign costs by up to a third. Our service offering is comprehensive and can include:
• Free annual reply licence fee for the first 12 months (in line with Royal Mail costs thereafter)
• Design consultancy on reply paid envelope specifications
• Business Reply Paid Postage on inbound response
• Banking of cash/cheque donations received, processing of Direct Debit instructions, credit card information, and other correspondence
• Provision of daily banking reconciliations
• Production of a personalised thank you letter (excluding outbound postage) despatched within 24 hours of envelope receipt
The importance of direct mail should not be overlooked. The American Cancer Charity reported an 11% drop in new donor acquisition within 12 months of halting direct mail fundraising campaigns. For this reason, we believe direct mail plays a key role in charity fundraising efforts and we are proud to be able to offer our partners one of the most cost-effective solutions in the British Isles.
There are additional benefits to using our Integrated Mailing Solutions services. We have direct access to the mail stream which means we can collate responses and process them under one roof. What's more, our high-speed digital printers can print more than 15,000 pages and fulfil up to 10,000 envelopes per hour. This delivers unrivalled efficiencies and cost savings that we pass on to you.
The Isle of Man Post Office also offers absolute security; we are ISO 9001, ISO 27001, BSI 10008 and PCI DSS accredited.
You can learn more about the Isle of Man Post Office's IMS services here.