The Thing About Direct Mail Recruitment

26 May The Thing About Direct Mail Recruitment

26 May 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Generally speaking, it’s not hard to recruit 60-80 new donors every year – meaning donors who have never given to your organization before. In most communities, there’s enough people moving out and in, enough people getting dragged to an event by someone else and having a great time, and enough people tripping over your website after taking a hike at one of your preserves to bring in at least 60 new donors every year.

In fact, it’s such a normal experience that I called it the “300 Member Trap” in an April 2019 post. It’s a trap because at best, an organization with 300 members will lose between 75 and 100 to attrition every year and “win back” 20-30.

Net loss is 55-80. Recruiting 60-80 new donors means breaking even. And staying right around 300. The number of land trust organizations with 250-350 annual supporters is amazing.

The number of donors an organization has in any given year is more related to recruitment than to any other factor. Sure, you need to keep the ones you have, and sure, improved renewal technique can get you to 70% or better but getting past 70% renewal becomes increasingly difficult. And increasingly more expensive.

And if you’re going to get to 500, or 800, or 1,000, or 2,000 members, you’re going to need to “invest” in marketing. Not simply leave it up to chance. Chance is good for the first 60. To get to 1,000 members, you’ll need the Chance 60 plus 200 more – every year. Four to five times what you are doing now.

Are you tabling at the Farmer’s Market four times a year? You need to table 16-20 times each year.

Are you sponsoring 30 outreach events? Try 120-150.

Getting new members from a fundraising Gala? You need to do four or five.

Gift memberships? Member-Get-A-Member campaigns?

Whatever you’re doing, multiple it by four to five.

It’s pretty easy to see that we need another solution. Put it this way: I haven’t met a local or regional land trust with more than 800 members that doesn’t have a significant budget dedicated to recruiting new members every year.

The traditional solution is direct mail. Lots of folks believe direct mail is dead. The truth is that it’s less and less effective while still being head and shoulders better than anything else. Maybe twenty or thirty years ago, a “decent” direct mail return was 1%. Mail out 10,000 letters, get one hundred back. Now it’s more like 0.6% – mail out 10,000, get sixty back.

A “new” solution is digital marketing. Digital marketing has some cool advantages. Like rapid fire testing. You can press send on Monday, analyze results on Thursday, make adjustments on Friday and press send again on Monday. By comparison, direct mail takes weeks and weeks.

And like multi-channel approaches. You can work with a basic email campaign and support it with social media and web advertising. Newer campaigns are even working with texting in support.

The question for both is – and then what?

With direct mail, we know most of the answers. The 10,000 letters cost $18,000 to print and mail. Of the sixty you recruit, just 27 make that first renewal. Five year later, there are just 20 left. And the land trust will have raised between $50,000 and $150,000.

I don’t have enough data for digital marketing. The only campaign I have first-hand knowledge of cost $50,000. But the ROI works on different premises – it’s not based on a number of pieces sent. I do know that members recruited from digital marketing campaigns tend to have a harder time renewing. Sixty first-gift donors yield less than ten first renewals. Five years later maybe six are left.

What I’ve come to believe is that the anchor strategy should still be direct mail. The first renewal rate is higher, resulting in faster and more efficient growth. And the ROI after five years more than justifies the cost. Moreover, most conservation donors are 60 years old and older. Boomers will tell you that they prefer paperless communications. But they still respond to paper and mail.

However, digital marketing still makes sense. It’s not either or. It’s BOTH. Think of the sequence as multiple channels of a single campaign. If you could mail 10,000 pieces and get 80 members, or 100, or even 120, without losing the new members as fast as you recruit them, the overall efforts will have been worthwhile.

As a less data-driven and more anecdotal aside, consider that your mailbox is probably a good deal less stuffed than it has been in the near past. This means that whatever you DO put in the mail is likely to draw more attention. Focus attention on households with a demonstrated interest in conservation, make the envelope colorful and inviting, adapt your four-page appeal letter to ask for a first gift, and set up a special landing page just for the campaign.

You should break through that 300-members trap in no time.

Cheers, and Have a great week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by WJ Y courtesy of Pixabay.