It is not too early to start planning your year-end marketing plan.  With the beautiful beach weather, holiday marketing planning is the last thing on people’s minds.  Waiting to implement and plan your direct mail program at the last minute is a luxury you can’t afford.

Giving Tuesday is to non-profit organizations as Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to retailers.

A successful Giving Tuesday campaign should be well thought out and should put your organization front and center.  With most non-profits urging their donors to donate during this time you want to grab as much attention as possible.  Direct mail is a great way to publicize your work and solicit from previous donors.  With solicitations coming from all non-profit organizations a physical personalized mailing piece will be sure to stand out from the flood of emails. 

For a Giving Tuesday campaign direct mail should be incorporated with your digital campaigns adding multiple touches and appealing to various audiences.  Incorporating donor specific urls and landing pages makes it that much easier for donors to contribute, while also helping you track donations and donor interaction.  Incorporating multi-channel marketing in your campaign will take lots of planning, so starting early will be helpful in making sure everything works seamlessly.

Direct mail should be one piece of a multi-channel end of year and Giving Tuesday appeal.  Make sure that your website, email, digital marketing, and direct mail campaigns all compliment each other.  All marketing should deliver similar messaging and drive  your target market to donate 

Timing an in home delivery date, is crucial to a successful campaign.  During the holiday season, your mail house and the USPS have increased workloads and this could affect your mail delivery dates.

Here is a list for planning your holiday direct marketing campaign:

1.       Create a budget.  Before starting out, develop a clear plan of how much you have to spend on the campaign.  Include creative, printing, mail services and postage.  Also, set aside an amount for testing.

2.      Consult with your Mailing professionals for the latest developments in direct mail marketing.  They can also help you plan your in-home delivery date.

3.      It is useful to establish an in-home delivery date and work backward from that.

4.      Execution work flow:  Creative design, copy writing, and proof approvals can often be cumbersome and time consuming.  Be disciplined in adhering to your schedule and build in extra time into your development calendar to account for these issues and minimize fire drills and additional cash.