Timing July 27, 2005

Steve Martin used to do a thing about comedy, how it's all about ti-MING--no!--timing, timing...which leads me to mailings. We send out mail on occasion to introduce people to GiftWorks. We did a December mailing that was disastrous--we need it would be but we did it anyway because we're sometimes not very smart. This Spring we sent out a lot of CDs to lots of nonprofits, and the response rate varied depending on the message and the time of the week or month the nonprofit received it. This week we did a mailing--or tried to, except the mailing house failed to get it out on time last week, and dropped on a Tuesday this week, and will do another drop maybe on Friday, and I have to say I'm not happy about the ti-MING of it.

Are your donors home when you send an appeal? Does it show up on a major junk mail day and get discarded with other mass mail? Does it show up on a Saturday? Do donors open your mail in the Fall but never the Spring? It's important to learn the best timing to send mail to your supporters. Because ti-MING can be costly and frustrating.

So do any of you use mail houses? Or do you you bring volunteers in? Tell me by clicking on Comments below. [Kintera, Blackbaud, Donorperfect, fundraising, nonprofit software, yeah, these are keywords]