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The little message: penny-wise and pound-foolish
By Stephen Thomas
May 22, 1995; Canadian FundRaiser
"You can help more by placing a stamp here." How often have you seen that message on a Business Reply Envelope (BRE)?
Executive directors, board members, even development directors love that little message. Trouble is, in my experience, it doesn't work. It's a case of being penny-wise and pound-foolish, losing response percentage and average donation amount.
If you test types of reply envelopes, I bet you'll find, as I have, that a BRE with a message will net you less than any of the alternatives. Well, with one exception. No return envelope whatsoever is an alternative, but to follow that route is suicidal. A few years back, when a major Canadian mailer didn't use a return envelope for its first renewal reminder, its usual response fell by three-quarters!
The best response will almost always be from a return envelope with a live stamp on it. But --- and it's a big but --- this won't be cost-effective for any but your highest donors. Forty-three cents added to each and every package is just too costly.
BRE a standard
In the past, a BRE would always beat a plain return envelope ("put your stamp here"), but this isn't always the case today. I suggest a BRE as standard, but be sure to test a plain envelope against it. And the BRE with a message, however stated, always finishes dead last in response and return.
Why? Well, remember that ours is an applied, not pure, science. I don't know. It just works out that way. By all means test it yourself and be sure to let me know if you get different results, but I don't think you will.
So while copying something you see over and over again in direct response usually makes sense ("it must be working"), it doesn't here. Forget the message.
Stephen Thomas is president of Stephen Thomas Associates, a direct mail fundraising consultancy based in Toronto. He can be reached at (416) 690-8801; Fax (416) 690-7256.