 Welcome. Thanks for being here and joining us for another episode of the non-profit show. We're thrilled to have you back for another Monday, or as I've been referring to it as Monday, because Friday gets all the fun and Monday kind of gets the womp, womp. But today we have Breonna Clink with us. Breonna is the COO of Abehah Solutions to talk to us about reducing cost and maximizing really your mail ROI. So we want to max that out. We want to get the most of our return on investment. So before we get into the conversation, we of course want to give a shout out to Julia Patrick, who's still enjoying so much time off. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, honored to serve alongside Julia as the co-host of the non-profit. This week we celebrate our 600 episodes. So for those of you that have been joining us and you've heard us talk about it, you know, 600, 600, 600, we are almost there. So we are so very proud to have our presenting sponsors support us each and every day. So let me give a verbal shout out to those sponsors. That would be Blimering, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy with the National University, Nonprofit Nerd, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique and the Nonprofit Thought Leader. These companies literally have been with us many from the very beginning, but they allow us to have these unscripted casual conversations with our guests. If you missed any of our episodes or you are going to love what Brianna shares, I have a feeling you will, you could replay us anywhere that you stream your entertainment. So we're also on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo and podcast. So if you're a podcast listener, go ahead and queue us up wherever you stream your podcast. So I put you on the pedestal Brianna. I've said how amazing and smart you are. I truly believe it. We also have your business partner Laura Ingalls joining us in a couple of weeks later this month, but I just want to say welcome and thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. That's delightful. Tell us a little bit about Abeyha, and I'm so proud that I've learned how to properly pronounce them, but I haven't always, right? So tell us a little bit about them. Yes, so Abeyha means bee, you know, the bumblebees in Spanish, and we really hope to be the worker bees for your non-profits, specifically around direct mail. We found that it was really difficult for small to medium non-profits who were doing their mail in house. They can't afford a full service agency, and so we're really that middle ground to be some short term, you know, help to get one or two appeals out the door or, you know, a longer relationship where we manage the donor communications. So very important, and so today's conversation is really about, you know, maxing that ROI. We want a highest return on investment, but first of all, before we dive into the deep end, I have to ask like the elephant in the room, is direct mail still alive and well, or is it just scaling down now that technology has almost taken over the world? Direct mail is still one of the most successful tactics for raising money. Online giving, according to BlackBod, is only 12% of total giving, 12%, right? And I know we all love to talk about millennials, but the people that have money to give to your organization are boomers and they are set to give $6.6 trillion with a T dollars in the next, you know, 20 years. And you know what they like? They like getting things in the mail. You can just fan it all out. I didn't practice that at all. I really did it. I'm an improviser, so if I get on the comedy circuit, I'm sorry. I can't help it. But mail has a sticking power. I have a pile of mail on my dining room table right now. I'm sure someone might feel the same way. Like it keeps moving around the house, you know, you bring it in the door and then you're like, I'll deal with it later. And then you sort it. It has a staying power, so it gets in front of donors quite a lot. And in fact, we've talked to tons of clients where they get a response device from something 18 months prior, from a year prior, right? So it sticks around unlike the fleeting moments of text messages and email, right? Like you don't see it. You it's gone. Well, I'm glad to know you two have a pile. Mine is currently on my kitchen island. And that's where it's been sitting, but probably because it moved from my dining room table onto that kitchen island. So that wasn't the first spot. It was next to the front door. And now it's on the dining room table. It takes its way around. So before we dive deeper, again, I just want to share Brianna's contact information for a Bayhaw solutions. Those of you listening, that's A-B-E-J-A solutions.com. So make sure you do check out their website. So okay, you did share with us that mail is still alive and well. People enjoy this, especially a certain demographic. So let's talk about the cost effectiveness. Can mail truly be cost effective? Talk to us about this, Brianna. It can be absolutely. But as we all know, in some places, the devil is in the details, right? So it's very easy to make it expensive. So first thing that I would encourage you to do is start early. If you think you're going to be doing a mail campaign, call your local printer, the people that always do your mail, call your design team, figure out what format, what the timing is looking like. And then you can handle problems much easier. Things can go wrong. One of the things that is going wrong industry-wide is the lack of envelopes. Number 10 envelopes, the standard business envelope, impossible. You would have bought that, right? First, it was toilet paper in 2020. It was the envelope. Yeah. And I mean, if anyone wants to nerd out about why, it's definitely... I do. Long story short, because we were all at home, all of the paper suppliers started packaging cardboard boxes for packaging. Other things happened. Shipping industry is under a lot of stress right now. And something about forestry in Finland. It's all... We're in a global interconnected world. Apparently, all of our paper pulp comes from Finland. Who knew? But yeah, there's a shortage of paper. So when you're... If you talk to your printer ahead of time and you know, okay, they need eight weeks, you need 10,000 pieces, you need 2,000 pieces. Of course, if you have a larger quantity, it's going to be harder for you. You can usually find 1,000 or 2,000 envelopes. But last holiday season, we had a client wait eight weeks for number 10 envelopes. And so their appeal went out after the end of the year. And it was... They didn't start early enough. So start early, get your stories together, get your images, all of those things. And then you're prepared with some cushion when the inevitable problems come up. So quick question. What is that sweet spot of how many appeals we should send a year? Because I'm envisioning if we need to think in advance and we need to get our preparation, we could probably map out the next 12 to even 18, if not 24 months, if we send cadence. Yeah. It really depends on the size of your organization. But for the most part, you're not asking your donors enough. We in the non-profit industry feel a little ashamed about asking a lot of times. And the truth of the matter is donors don't start getting annoyed. In general, this is according to Tom Ahern until they've had 26 pieces of mail. 26. So I have not met an organization that is doing that yet. You might maybe much larger organizations that are doing lots of acquisition, position or television commercials. But none of my clients are doing that. Start with once a quarter or maybe even twice a year and then add two more. Start with what is feasible and then add from there. But it's certainly reasonable to do four appeals a year. And then you'll want to figure out what's the best time for your region. Here in Arizona, no one is here in June, July and August. We just don't ask. So everything, like no one's here. If you are a food pantry and you want to do a back-to-school drive, here my husband is a teacher. He went back to school this morning for the first day. But in Washington State, school doesn't start until after Labor Day. So you find your regional cadence. But absolutely end of year, 12% of all giving is in the last three days, the three days of the year. So you definitely want to be asking. November, December, prime times absolutely get something in the mail and then figure out whether it's a spring, fall, and all of that. So back to the envelopes. If we're doing something quarterly, should we also be purchasing those envelopes and maybe hoarding them throughout the year? Is that most effective or is that just asinine? It depends on the quantity that you're looking for. And this is why I say talk to the experts because your printer will say, okay, if you're just doing a thousand at a time, we're going to do those on a digital printer and you don't need to hoard. It's four color, all that sort of stuff. If you need 10,000, 20,000 every time, absolutely. You want to talk to your printer about getting an allocation, that's the industry term for those pre buys. And then you want to discuss whether it makes sense to have envelopes converted on demand or if you want to go with, let me just pull a sample. This organization has a large volume appeal that goes out and so they converted their envelope to actually only two colors, right? It's gray scale and red. But for their smaller appeals, they use their full color logo because this is done on a digital printer and this is offset. But you don't need to become an expert in direct mail, just ask the questions. I have a thousand pieces. What's the cheapest, most convenient way to do this? Your printers can help you, your a beja can help you, your design agency, but you definitely want someone who knows printing and all of the technical things and how to save money there. So you just went to a super nerdy USPS, was it prints, a training? Tell us about this because you're sharing with us not only how mail can truly be cost effective, but you're going to share with us now more ways or hacks as we have here for saving money. So what did you learn? And first of all, where did you go? Tell us about this, what was offered? So mail is a huge business and USPS annually has a postal forum this year. It happened to be in Phoenix, so it was super convenient for me and people that send mail, printers, packages, marketers, were there. So I got to nerd out and I became a mail design professional. But here's the thing and this is why I say talk to the experts because I'm not knocking USPS. I love them, they're great, they're fantastic. But the retail employees that at your just standard office may not be able to help you with the technical business mail knowledge that you might need for bulk mailings. Because if you go to a business entry mail unit, they're going to look at they have all of these tools. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean these like how big the barcode is, how far from the edge of our code is, how thick a piece is, there are rules on how much flex an envelope should have. So you don't need to be as nerdy as I am. Are you sure? Because it's pretty fun. I really like the nerdiness that's easy. It's so much fun. I know like it's but no one else. I board my family to tears. Yeah, once I got this. But you they're a well qualified printer will have a mail design professional on their staff. Good to know. Yeah. Yeah. And so they have the tools to look at your piece and say, this will go in the mail. No problem. Or, hey, you might want to re examine this design. And here's why. Common air square pieces cost more in postage. And if you're over an ounce, you're going to pay extra in postage, right? You either have to put a over oversized, what is it non machinable surcharge. And this is someone who didn't pay attention to the flex problem. Or you end up paying too much for your mailing first class stamps are 60 cents. Now this letter cost $1.20 to send. And it could have been cheaper if if this person actually calculated like with a US postal employee or using the resources on usps.com. And they could have put a first class stamp and probably some smaller stamps, like these one 10 cent 3 cent stuff. But for the most part, you want to think about your whole package. How much does it weigh? And the paper that you use, your commercial printer knows what what weight, you know, like a standard appeal is going to cost this much. It's a standard first class. But when you start adding brochures, you might want to reduce the paper weight for the ones that you mail versus the ones that you give out at a event because they're too heavy. So many variables I would have never thought as one of the cost effective, you know, tips to save money would be to print on multiple size our weight paper, right? Just what you said. Maybe you print on a different size for it to go in the mail because apparently there's this flex scale that you just shared with us today. Yeah. But your printer knows how to do that or you're, you know, someone who's designing for the mail all the time and digital, my brother works in digital. And like things that work really well on digital may not translate to to print run. I have some invitations here, like contrast is a big thing. So one of it's not a hack so much is it going to save you money, but it's going to raise you more money. I don't scrimp on the things that your donors need to read and respond. Because you want a response to that mail piece. This is a lovely invitation, but it's really hard to read because the contrast didn't come across on the print piece. You have to change the the amount of light reflection between a digital and a mail piece. Anyway, nerdy, I'm sorry. I'm here for it, Brianna. I think you're doing fantastic. So what are some other, because we're going to move into being successful, but give us some more cost effective ways to save. What are these hacks that you learn to help save money? Absolutely. Okay. So postage, you want to get a non-profit authorization from USPS. I wondered because I started to interrupt. The ones you're holding up, they mostly have the the actual stamp. Well, because those were bad examples. But a non-profit authorization allows you to get lower price postage. It's about $0.14 to $0.17 per piece versus a stamp $0.60. First class bulk mail is closer to like $0.45. But yeah, you'll see a permit imprint on a lot of these pieces. You do have the option to use stamps even with your non-profit authorization. They're called pre-canceled stamps. Let me see if I have an example here. Yeah, this is a pre-canceled stamp. So this costs about $0.14 or $0.17. And it just looks a little bit different. But I don't know who's listening. If you're doing your own mail in-house, oftentimes doing stamps is the cheapest way, because preparing the paperwork for a bulk postage mailing 200 or more pieces can be fairly onerous. But regardless, get that non-profit authorization and keep it up to date. Start early, right? Check that record with USPS. And USPS has terrible documentation. So if you're unsure how to do that, just shoot a Behan email. And we have documentation to fill that gap. But you want to make sure your address is correct. And the name of your organization is correct. Because it has to appear in a prominent location. And that sometimes USPS looks at your piece and says, actually, we're going to charge you first class because you didn't identify yourself here. And you don't want to make that mistake. Or you changed your name from one, you had a branding change, and then it costs you a lot extra. The other way to save money on postage is clean your data. Duplicates, incorrect householding. You're not going to be able to fix everything, but it's a constant process. Just clean as much as you can so that you're getting the right information to the right people. The other thing that you'll do there is try to get rid of the friend unknown. It's hard to say friend unknown. Getting this in the mail, yikes. Am I going to respond to this? Heck no. You don't even care to figure out what my name is. Or friend unknown. Like you put no care into this mailing. Yeah, no care. So that moves us into how do we know when we're being successful? So one of the things I hear you saying is know your donors. And I have to riff off of that as well. Because of course, a female named Jared, I get often not friend unknown, but I get Mr. Jared Ransom. And I think, wow, they did not take the time to get to know me. What are other ways when we can say, wow, this mailing was successful? What are the metrics of that that you know and maybe nerd it out at the USPS conference? Well, the first thing you need to know is what is the goal of this piece? Is it a renewal piece? You're just trying to get donors that gave last year to renew their gift. Is it a recapture campaign for deeply lapsed folks? Are you trying to upgrade folks into monthly donors or things like that? There are lots of different goals that you can be going after. And then the metrics that you use, of course, those numbers are going to be different based on your goals. But what I recommend people take a look at is first, the overall response rate. Industry average for a warm mailing list. So people that have been solicited on an ongoing basis is about six to nine percent, depending on whether you're looking at black box data or fundraising effectiveness project. So six to nine percent. Are you reaching that goal? Are you increasing that? You definitely want to have that as the baseline. And then you can break up that response rate specific to your goal. What was the renewal rate for current donors? What was the recapture rate? What was the acquisition rate of new donors? A lot of people have people on their email address list. They haven't given, but they're giving their getting your newsletter. How can we acquire those folks? Is that one of your goals? The other thing you want to look at is, of course, your gross and your net. What did you make from the appeal? What did you net from it? Paper and postage cost money. And then you can calculate your return on investment. And then I also recommend the cost to raise a dollar. And you can calculate that through that gross net information too. And then you can start comparing your campaigns over time. I can't tell you what good looks like for your organization. If you've been radio silent for a long time, you probably aren't going to get the high response rates for at least a year. But you have to start stewarding your people. The more you communicate, it's very counterintuitive. The more you communicate, the more your donors respond. And the most, the more recent the gift, the more likely they are to give again. Fascinating. So you said that earlier in the show, 26 touches was what Tom Ahern had shared? When donors start to notice that you're being slightly annoying. That's when we get tons of mail. I'm not counting the number of times that Habitat for Humanity sent me an appeal. I just get appeals. And I like reading the stories. And yeah, according to Tom Ahern, when you get past 26 asks in a year, that's when people start noticing. Your organization may be different. Abeja is very data focused. We start with industry data. If you don't have your own, you know, solid stats and then move to setting baselines with your organizations and then adjusting from there. Your mileage may vary. Absolutely. But if you don't know what's happening with your donors, then we go with baselines from, you know, industry data. Yeah, no, that's, that's great to know. I just wanted to announce that again. And one final question, Brianna, before we move into sadly the closing of the episode, it goes by so quickly. We talked a little bit in the green room chatter about making, you know, your letter successful for the reader. And I brought about DEAI, diversity, equity, access and inclusion. And wonder truly about the ability level of, you know, just just reading in general. Could you share again, briefly, you know, like, is there a certain font size? Is there a certain like educational level that we're looking to write in? Yeah, so we are not our audience. We have to remember that as as professionals, only half of Americans read at an eighth grade level. So you got to bring it down a lot of notches. I know a lot of folks are writing at 12th or, you know, higher grades, because, you know, they're working in legal, you know, justice, legal, legal aid. And but your donors are not you. So we always recommend writing at a sixth grade, fifth to sixth grade level, because that's going to that's going to make it easier for all of your donors. And that's not to say dumb it down. It just means use smaller words, break up your sentences, semicolons. I love a semicolon, but not in a fundraising appeal, right? Put that put that in your your academic letters. The font size, right? I am in my in my early 40s, and I have progressive lenses, right? I'm right there with you. Don't worry. What is this? How in the world are am I going to to respond to this? So we always recommend for your appeals to have a pre add as much information as you can for the donor. I don't want to have to fill in my name and address. You sent me a letter. You have it, right? Give them, give them I know the focus is a little off here, give them some dollar amounts, make it easy. So it's just filling in a couple checkboxes on a form and make it readable, right? The difference, even if you can't do personalization on your appeal, the difference between a response device like this or like this, white space, at least a 14 point font. Serif fonts are easier for people to read and print. There are some sans serif fonts that break the rules. But in general, sans serif or serif fonts are easier for people to read indent your paragraphs. Yeah, that makes it easier for people to read, add white space, increase the the letting in the kerning. And again, a design professional can help you with this. A lot of the terminology is yeah, kerning, right? But like this is a bit this is big text. You can't read it from here, but you can see oh, there's some space. You know, it's comfortable to read. I love your passion for this. I do. For those of you, you know, Brianna has said contact an expert and she very rarely said contact a Bayhaw. So I'm going to give a shout out for a Brianna clean COO with a Bayhaw solutions. Those of you listening. Thank you. Of course, that's a b e j a solutions.com. And again, a Bayhaw means be like a bumblebee in Spanish. So thank you for doing that. And and also we have your business partner Laura Ingalls on in a couple of weeks talking more about donor pages. So I just love anytime Julie and I get the opportunity to nerd out. And that's exactly what you did today. Of course, you showed up and on this money. And I'm so glad that you did Brianna. I also want to give a verbal shout out to our amazing presenting sponsors that allow these conversations like the one we just had with Brianna. So thank you so very much to Bloomerang, American nonprofit Academy, fundraising Academy with the National University, nonprofit nerd, your part time controller, staffing boutique, and the nonprofit thought leader. These companies stay with us each and every day to bring these super nerdy and relevant conversations to our viewers and our listeners. So thank you for joining us Brianna. Thank you for having me. Yes, thank you so much and to all of our viewers and listeners that joined us. The time goes by so very quickly, but I do want to remind you to please stay well so you can continue to do well. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you all back here tomorrow.