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Having heard that cold direct mail is delivering some excellent results you may be considering adding it to your fundraising mix. You might already have a mail pack idea in mind and know who you will target and what success looks like – the core of a winning campaign. But have you considered these other less obvious points, which can make all the difference to whether your idea flies or not?

With any fundraising activity it’s important to consider the potential for reputational risk and how best to manage it. But when you’re reaching out to new audiences and contacting people through a ‘cold’ direct mail campaign, it’s even more critical to make sure you’ve covered all the bases.

This means protecting both yourself and the people you mail by doing everything possible to ensure it meets legal and best practice requirements, that it’s transparent, honest, and ethical, and that it has the full support of your organisation.

Cold mail is historically seen as a lengthy process, and it very often is. A great creative campaign can take several months from first concept to landing on a recipient’s doormat. And then you’ve still got to wait for the responses to come in.

So why does it take so long? And are there ways of reducing this?

Less cluttered doormats, better data, increasingly receptive audiences of all ages – and a greater need than ever to raise funds. No wonder you’re considering cold direct mail.

But as with any channel you also need to think about the financials, and charity direct mail packs tend to have more elements than most to consider when costing up a campaign. If you’re new to DM or are coming back to it after a long break, it’s easy to be blindsided by an unexpected additional cost.

A common misperception with direct mail is that you have to send out a truly massive campaign in order to get any worthwhile results, as most of it goes unopened or straight into the recycling bin. However, response rates for direct mail post GDPR have boomed over the last two years. Where campaigns were considered successful with response rates of 0.5 – 1%, campaigns today (yes, mid-pandemic) are reaching up to 6%.

A common – and understandable ­– misconception is that, since GDPR kicked in, cold data has gone the way of the dinosaurs and is no longer available for charities to use in campaigns.

In fact, while large volume files and many data pools of old did cease to exist when the legislation came in, there is still great, responsive cold data available. This combined with good targeting is producing strong results for the charities using it, with recent fundraising mailings achieving between 1.5% and 6%.

With the pandemic yet to show any signs of abating, many of us are likely to be working from home for quite some time to come. But it’s not without its challenges, and for those working with personal data, whether it is details for supporters, beneficiaries or even staff, one of the most important areas to get right is data protection compliance.

In a blog first published on the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s site, Suzanne Lewis looks at the key things that employers and employees need to remember when working from home in terms of data protection compliance.

Many of us have become used to working from home as a result of the coronavirus lockdown restrictions, and a lot of people have found it really works for them and their employers. By all accounts, WFH is likely to become a more common factor of the post-COVID norm. On the plus side, today’s technology enables us to work remotely yet remain connected, especially so with video meetings; it allows us to be more flexible with our hours, avoid that dreary commute and its nasty carbon emissions, reduce our spend on travelling and lunches, and so on. But it’s not without its challenges, particularly when it comes to data protection.

In an article first published on The Fundraiser, Suzanne Lewis discusses how to ensure your database stays in good, clean shape:

There is nothing worse than finding out a charity communication has caused distress. We have all heard horror stories of mailings mistakenly sent out to a recently deceased file, or phone calls made to vulnerable people, but a really common issue is when a communication is sent to a previous occupier old address and so never reaches its intended target.

In a recent blog for the Institute of Fundraising, Arc Data founder Suzanne Lewis, who sat on the IoF's focus group for GDPR, says that while the new legislation has had cost implications for fundraisers, it was not the ‘bogeyman’ that many had feared – and that there are real benefits to adhering to these new levels of accountability.

It’s been yet another great Fundraising Convention – one full of inspiring and uplifting experiences, and positivity.

While there is always a real buzz around Convention, the enthusiasm and motivational spirit seemed even greater this year with a real sense of the sector looking to the future following 2018’s challenges of implementing GDPR.

June saw the ICO slam the UK Metropolitan Police Service for failing to handle personal data requests correctly, for which there could be an eye-watering fine for as much as £17 million. No organisation is immune from scrutiny over its data protection compliance.

Civil Society’s annual CRM survey is out and it’s an interesting read this year, not that there are any real surprises in the products it covers as it’s the same names you’d expect, but more so in that it highlights some surprising and pretty major gaps in charity technology provision from the CRM giants.

Any organisation that deals with people, whether they are customers, supporters, donors, even employees, handles personal data that, under GDPR, must be protected.

But what exactly does the term ‘personal data’ cover?

If you’re a small local business, you likely know all your loyal customers personally. It’s fairly simple then to build a mutually beneficial relationship that keeps them coming back. Grow beyond a certain size however, and keeping track of all your customers, their history with you, and their preferences is next to impossible. Unless you have a system in place that brings all this data together.

This is where a Single Customer View comes in, it’s vital for both good customer or supporter management, as well as compliance. 

Whether you are sending marketing communications to people or fundraising, in the world of GDPR, it is essential to be clear which legal ground you are using for processing data and contacting people. The Institute of Fundraising (IoF) explains more about these legal grounds in its GDPR guide but in a nutshell there are two options: consent, or legitimate interests.