Melissa Barber, Friends of Trees

Like most small nonprofits, Friends of Trees doesn't have the budget for elaborate bar-code systems or a chunk of staff time to track the success of its direct mail campaigns. But the biologist in me knew we could get cleaner data with only a little bit of extra effort -- and you can, too.

About a year ago, we tracked the success of our mailings by attributing all the contributions we received between the drop dates of two successive mailings to the first mailing in that series. For example, if we sent one out in December and the next one went out in February, all of the donations mailed to us before February were credited to the December letter, every donation after it to the February appeal. It makes sense, and feels true -- until you start tracking the data.

You can even use your existing supplies and systems to track the success of your different direct mail campaigns. My process includes marking the remittance envelopes so it's easy to see which mailings people respond to, then using some quick ways to analyze the campaigns' relative success.

Stamps!

When I looked around the office for a way to mark return envelopes without getting a headache from inhaling marker fumes, I came across a basket of the stamps we use on our name-tags to assign volunteers to different work crews. We also had different colored ink pads. Success! I'll bet you can find something similar, but I find the stamps to be great because:

• Many of the stamps are small enough to fit into the margins of our return envelopes, and all the envelope text is still easy to read.
• If the volunteers who help me prepare for mailings are any indication, these colorful images may be seen as added decoration, rather than a tracking code.
• With the envelopes marked for the different mailings, you can see how long people hold on to your remittance envelopes before finally making their contribution. We've received donations more than 5 months after a mailing. This helps guide our mailing strategy.
• Added bonus: it's meditative. Having stamped most of my envelopes on my own, I have found it's a relaxing way to occupy my hands while on a long car trip, watching a movie, or conversing with friends. Sometimes (though not often) my friends even want to join in on the fun!

Dual-purpose Lists

Don't you hate duplicating work? In our case, there isn't an easy way to create mailing lists or track mailing success within our current Access database. (I see a brighter future for this after we convert to a CRM, and I'm really looking forward to using the built-in functionality of Salesforce to help me quickly see the effectiveness of our all our campaigns.) For now, we're stuck with static Excel spreadsheets. If you are, too, make Excel work for you rather than the other way around:

• After moving your mailing list out of your database and into Excel, sort it in as many different ways as it takes to get rid of duplicates or other bad data to come up with your target mailing group.
• Rather than using this list once to generate letters and envelopes, use the same list to track the returns by adding columns. In our case, that means:
  • a couple columns to the far left: donation amount and date of donation;
  • and two rows at the top: one describes the stamp on the return envelope and the other row sums the donation amount column and counts how many times I've entered a donation date.
• As the returns come in, handily marked with your unique code, enter the donation amount and date for each individual who donates.

Central tracking

Sure, these individual mailing spreadsheets quickly sum up and count the donations generated by your mailing, but how does this relate to the success of other mailings? How does it compare to the mailing cost to send? Here's were you create a master Excel Dashboard spreadsheet:

• Each mailing gets a column in this spreadsheet.
• The top rows in this spreadsheet can capture the drop date of the mailing, which group of donors you targeted (renewal, acquisition, etc.), date range of last donations made by the group, postage and mail-house costs, paper material costs (letterhead, remittance envelopes, etc.); these costs are summed up in the next row. (Your spreadsheet should track the things that matter to your organization.)
• The next rows include formulas based on the information collected, so it's easy to see how many people received the mailing and how much it cost per person.
• Here's where it gets a little geeky: pass the work to Excel by linking to the individual mailing spreadsheets. The two linking rows we use are total donations and number of pieces returned.
  • Linking is just a fancy way of avoiding having to copy and paste data from one spreadsheet to another on an ongoing basis. To link a mailing spreadsheet to a master spreadsheet select the cell that sums the donations received in the mailing spreadsheet and, after navigating back to the appropriate cell in your master tracking spreadsheet, select "Paste Special..." and click the "Paste Link" button. From then on, all you'll have to do is click the "update" button every time you open the master spreadsheet. All the data you've entered in your mailing spreadsheets will then be summarized in one single-page document.
• The rest of the rows can simply contain formulas to tell you response rate percentage, average return per person, the net return, etc.

But I sometimes get a little too exuberant about spreadsheets. I'd love to hear how others are measuring the success of their mailing campaigns. What are your favorite tracking tips?