Lift Monday: A series about the art and science of "Lifts" in direct mail fundraising.
Probably the most common type of lift in direct mail fundraising is the humble and maligned freemium.
You know, address labels and other inexpensive things such as notepads, bookplates, pens, coins, and greeting cards.
I'm calling them "freemiums" to differentiate them from "premiums," which are items donors are offered in return for a gift, like the classic public broadcasting totebag. Similar, but meaningfully different.
Freemiums can work for many organizations.
They might work for you, but you have to be on top of the economics and the psychology of using them. Unlike other lifts they you can just include in the envelope and hope they more than pay for themselves, freemiums require a wide-awake approach.
Here's the main thing to know about freemiums: They increase response to direct mail fundraising. Sometimes by quite a lot.
Here's the other thing to know: They decrease average gift. And, sometimes, they lower subsequent donor retention.
You get more donors, but lower value donors.
Whether that's good or bad is the big question. Obviously, you'd like more high value donors. But sometimes getting a higher volume of low-value donors pencils out because you end up with more candidates to upgrade to major-status, more who convert to monthly, and more who make bequests.
It works in some cases, not in others.
And the only way to find out is through testing.
One thing you should not do, though: Reject the whole idea of freemiums just because you think it's tacky.
They work very well for some. Maybe for you.
The Lift Monday series concludes next week with a look at the question you may have been asking all along: Are lifts wasteful?
