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📍What we're talking about this issue: 
Tips and inspiration for your fundraising outer envelopes

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Dear defender of good,

Let’s all take a calming breath together now... year-end fundraising season is here. 

So if you haven’t given much thought yet to the outer envelope for your upcoming fundraising appeals and reminders, today’s Loyalty Letter is just for you: 

Outer Envelopes, the Inside Scoop: 
Offbeat Ideas and Timeless Tips for Your Fundraising Carriers

✍️ By Lisa Sargent
Fundraising copywriter

September 2024

Whether year-end or any season, your outer envelope (also known as the carrier envelope) has one job, and one job only: 

To inspire/motivate/move/compel/invite/beckon someone to open your outer envelope and see what’s inside.
 

Fundraising legend Jerry Huntsinger once said that if one person in 50 opened his outer envelope, he considered the fundraising campaign a success. (That’s a 2% response rate – so I’m guessing he was talking about an acquisition or ‘cold’ appeal pack. Your goal for existing supporters will absolutely and always be higher than that.)

The point here isn’t to start some competition around response rates. 

Rather, it’s to focus on the very thing that sparks all direct mail response rates and direct mail gifts, ever:

 
For the love and giving magic to unfold, 
your recipient must open that outer envelope first.
 

Put these samples and examples to work this year-end, for inspiration and implementation: 
(note: not all images are active links, so you aren't sent endlessly to my website)

The Outspoken Offer Outer

If you have a matching gift with a deadline, try adding that to your outer envelope. 

Here’s one international nonprofit CARE did:

And another one, super simple, that we did a few years ago. Good because it gets in a bit of the benefit:

You can also go a step further to incorporate the good being done:

Your gift can double to rush three times the love and lifesaving relief for homeless dogs. Open now for details... 🐾
 

If you’re sending an appeal for your annual fund – and I’m going to say this even though I’ll get pushback – you might want to see what happens when you use “Annual Fund” on the outer envelope.  (Don’t believe me? See what Jeff Brooks has to say about that.)

The Kitchen-Sink Carrier

You hear all the time that a simple outer envelope beats a fancy one. I’m here to tell you that’s not always the case.
 
Our own test went like this. A traditionally sized outer envelope, tinted yellow, with a bit of handwriting-font copy and drawing on the front, vs. a full-image, ½-page sized outer, and the same copy.
 
What would your gut tell you? That the simple, curiosity-style outer would win? 

Well... not in this case. The full-image outer, which announced far more clearly that this was a “fundraising” style letter, won by a mile.

So: if you have powerful teaser copy or an emotive quote, and a strong image with good eye contact, consider getting this on your outer envelope. Even if you have to use a window for the address, you might beat that plain envelope.

Note that I say powerful teaser... emotive quote... strong image. Otherwise a pure plain, or 'blank' outer envelope might be your best bet:

In this 5-minute video from my friends at Moceanic, experts Jeff Brooks and Sean Triner say if you can’t think of anything for your outer, just make it plain. No teaser. No photo.  

Or, you can consider almost plain, like we did here...

The Happily Homespun Envelope

Want to try something extra-special for the end of the year? 

This one’s won a bit of acclaim around the world, and its secret is simplicity – a Merry Christmas message (in Irish), a very simple border, and a straight from the heart feeling:

 
(Important: part of the charm of this pack is that it’s also what we call “a lumpy mailer,” because inside there is a wrapped tea bag inviting the reader to brew a cup as they read. This sample has been shared so many times on my portfolio, but here it is again if you want more. :-))

Speaking of lumpy...

The Lumpy Mailer

Coins, gloves, magnets, keychains, tote bags. The list of direct mail premiums goes on, and love them or loathe them, we’ve all received these in fundraising appeals. For one good reason: because they work. And one of the reasons they work is because they make for 'lumpy mailers,' meaning, it looks and feels like something is inside that envelope.  

See this Who’s Mailing What feature for some pictures of premium packs – or ‘freemiums,’ in this case, because they come with the pack itself and make it lumpy (and a huge h/t to direct mail expert Paul Bobnak, who wrote the WMW article linked above, plus loads of other excellent resources on the power of print. Follow Paul on LinkedIn, it's well worth your time). 

While they do add cost, the truth is that lumpy mailers can really boost response. We’ve seen that something super simple and tied to the mission – that teabag in the above example is one – keeps retention solid and doesn’t create donors who only give for the gift. 

The Color Me Opened Outer

If you’re on LinkedIn, have a look at Richard Turner’s post on the amazing orange outer used in the UK by Solar Aid. 

Solar Aid use it for thank-you letters to donors (lovely and memorable!)... but you could 100% consider it for your year-end appeal. [And just to note, this isn't my work -- full credit to Richard Turner and Solar Aid.]

The Large-as-Life Envelope 

For years this was the outer envelope to a control pack (banker's pack) for the Nature Conservancy. An expanded size outer big enough for an image of a life-size hummingbird. 

Every so often, even today, it still makes the rounds... so we direct mail folks know that it still gets lots of good results. (And if you receive NatCon mail here in the US, you can sometimes see when they test an outer envelope to try and top it.)

Can you feature a life-size image like this hummingbird? Shown here with my own ruler for scale :)
 

And for our short and sweet summary, before we move on from outer envelopes, I leave you with:

Fundraising Envelopes: Five Timeless Tips

1. Get your data right: If you spell the name wrong, if the address is a mess, yes, it might reach your recipient. But if these are folks who’ve supported you before and their name is misspelled, what does that say about the importance of their support? (Follow my genius fundraising friend T. Clay Buck and you'll never see data the same way again. Seriously.)
2. Never be unethical or intentionally deceiving: I know, some organizations send those “faux invoice outers.” My advice? Never do it, because you can do so much better. If you have to rely on some kind of disguise to attract donors, go back to basics first: emotion, story, offer.
3. Don’t imagine they’ll see the front of your envelope first – or even if they see it first, that they won’t flip it over. Can you, should you, add something to the back? Or... can you try a reverse flap?
4. Pay attention to postage: live stamps and seasonal stamps (applied a little off kilter :-)) add a personal touch and generally outperform. But if you have to use a nonprofit indicia (i.e., the mark that replaces stamp for prepaid bulk mail; in Ireland: Ceadúnas) it’s not the end of the world.
5. Be open to bending brand rules: Someday we’re going to chat about nonprofit branding. For today I’ll say this. If your nonprofit brand includes weird rules created by people who have no fundraising writing and fundraising design backgrounds, please be open to bending said rules for fundraising: barriers like headlines must be in all caps (ALL CAPS LOOK LIKE SHOUTING AND THE EYE STRUGGLES TO READ THEM, NOT GOOD), or only and always some kind of condensed sans serif font in dark gray or stingy handwriting font, these things could really hurt your outer envelope (and therefore, the performance of your pack – even worse if you’re restricted to those readability roadblocks in the appeal itself).  

That's the inside scoop on outer envelopes from me today... with one more tiny anecdote. Just in case you think those outer envelope teasers are easy, it sometimes takes me more than a dozen tries to get them the way I want. I think you can still buy used copies of Mal Warwick's How to Write Successful Fundraising Appeals, he shares a bunch of great teasers to help get you started.

Thank you, this week and every week, for building a better world through the work you do. And thank you for being a Loyalty Letter subscriber, always.

Write with great heart!  

Lisa ✍️

PS. And one more outer envelope as my special thanks to you for reading this far. The quirky coffee ring outer -- a version of which is featured in John Lepp's book Creative Deviations:

[Credit: Huge hat tip to my design partner, Sandie Collette, who dreamed up the outer with me and MQI's then head of fundraising Denisa Casement, now CEO of the Casement Group.] 

Re: John... I had a great chat with John Lepp a few weeks ago as a guest for his Agents of Good DM (Direct Mail) Clinics. You should totally sign up for the clinics, they run through December. All free, all amazing. 

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