10 Temptations to Avoid in Acquisition Packages

Temptation No. 1
Starting the project by writing the letter.
Here’s what’s happening: You’ve been assigned to create an acquisition package. You’re up for it because you have a great idea. You feel really good about that idea. You are sure it’s a winner. So you sit down and start writing the letter, right? Wrong. The letter is the very last thing you should create.

Temptation No. 2
Creating the package and then finding out how much it will cost.
Start with financial research. What is the cost of the current control? What is your cost per new donor? If you have a great idea but find out that it’s going to almost double the cost of the previous prospect package, you have a big problem. You’ll have to get twice as many donors!

But if you think your new idea is just a whole lot better than the old package, then go ahead and take a calculated risk. In fact, load up the package. Then, if the results are good but the package cost is too high, do a test where you skinny the package down.

You see, what you want is a package that will bring in the highest number of donors at the lowest per-donor cost, with the highest average gift.

Dream on. Somewhere in the above equation, you’ll have to make a decision and then go with it. But don’t go with it blindly.

Temptation No. 3
Creating a package without first examining what you’re
testing against.
If your new idea is very similar to the old idea, then the only increase will be incremental, and it won’t result in a breakthrough. Sometimes incremental is good — and sometimes that’s all you can really expect.

But, of course, you hope for a breakthrough, so that means doing something that is very much different from the current control.

Temptation No. 4
Writing any copy without first working out the design for each piece in the package.
How many pages will your letter be? You don’t have the luxury of just writing page after page until you finally come to an end and only then discover how many pages you’ve written. Every page costs money.

What will be the size of the enclosures? How much copy can you put on each enclosure? What theme or headline or graphic will go on each piece, and how will they all be tied together? Every insert costs money.

If you have too much copy, you might be tempted to reduce the type size and squeeze more words onto each piece of paper. Deadly.

Temptation No. 5
Putting teaser copy on the carrier envelope just because everyone else seems to do it.
Teaser copy can kill you at times. And the problem some writers face is that the big boss or the person who signs the letter thinks you haven’t really done a good, creative job unless you clutter up the carrier envelope with copy.

The purpose of the carrier envelope is simply to get ripped open with a certain degree of anticipation. Nothing else. If it gets opened, you win. If it doesn’t, you lose.

If the recipient of the envelope can pretty much determine what’s inside, then she can make a decision on whether or not she wants to open the envelope. You don’t ever want that to happen. (It’s much different in housefile appeals, where the individual already knows what’s going to be inside and has a vested interest in it because she’s made a contribution.)

Temptation No. 6
Trying to win with words.
As a kid, did you ever hear the little chant, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? A prospect package needs lots of sticks and stones. And the purpose of the words is to get the person interested in and relating to those sticks and stones.

A good prospect package is always tactile. There’s something to feel, something to see, something to touch, something to look at, something to turn over — maybe even something to squirrel away.

But if your package is just a sticky morass of words, then nothing is going to feel good about it. And if your new package looks rather like the control but has great new words, don’t expect much besides an incremental increase. A breakthrough rarely comes with words. It comes with a total package change.

And premiums. Ninety percent to 95 percent of all control packages have premiums of some kind. Surrender to the inevitable. If you’re worried that your premium donor is going to be of a low quality, comfort yourself with the fact that a premium donor is better than no donor at all.

Temptation No. 7
Saving the reply form for last.
Do it first. A reply form has two principle parts:

• The proposition: Why does your charity want the money?
• The benefits: What will the donor receive for sending the gift?

So, if your letter is going to have a list of five benefits, then you want to start with them in the reply form. Don’t worry about making the reply form too long. Use a full sheet of paper if you need to.

And remember, many times when a person really gets intrigued with the package and decides to make a gift, the reply form is the only part of the package that doesn’t get thrown away.  

Actually, the reply form and the reply envelope — those items are put away for further action. And then when it’s time to write a check, if the individual only has a little flimsy slip of paper with no copy or substance on it, he forgets why he got so emotionally involved in the first place and doesn’t bother to send a gift.

Temptation No. 8
Writing an encyclopedia of every fact about the charity.
Your letter must not be a cafeteria menu. Your letter must not be a laundry list. Your letter must be strongly focused on one particular aspect of the charity.

Many times the organization people will say something like, “You didn’t mention our youth program.” So what? Put in a paragraph or two about the youth program and half a dozen other programs, and all of a sudden your letter has totally lost its focus.

A prospect package has to be a gestalt. That is, individual elements all tied together until you have a chemical reaction. And you do this by making everything in the package completely transparent, so the donor knows exactly what you need the money for, when you need it, how much you need, the consequences if you don’t get the money, and so on and so forth.

You can’t have a gestalt if your letter gets diluted with an overload of organizational detail.

Temptation No. 9
Using dense paragraphs.
A paragraph can be one word or one line or two lines or three lines. But when a paragraph is five lines in New Roman type, then the reader is just going to jump over that paragraph and not go to the trouble of deciphering it.

Many seasoned writers have a rule that a paragraph must be no more than three lines and can be four lines only if the last line is a fragment line. If you examine a lot of prospect controls that are in the mail, you’ll be surprised how short the paragraphs average out to be.

Most marketing material is scanned before it’s read. Long paragraphs can’t be scanned. This is especially a problem in prospecting, because the reader doesn’t know about you. It’s a little different (but maybe not much!) for a donor, who is more apt to take the time and trouble to work things out.

And talking about scanning … make that easy for the reader to do! Indent paragraphs. Put in headlines. Bold lines. Underlining. Things that jump out. Don’t let the readers’ eyes get stuck. Morph from section to section with connectives so the letter moves forward in seamless transitions.

Remember, a prospect, unlike a donor who has a vested interest, has no reason to struggle to read your letter.

Temptation No. 10
Finishing your copy without first reading it aloud.
Find someone you trust. Sit across the table from her and start reading your letter. If you stumble, that means your copy needs to be put in a better conversational style.

If the person across the table loses the thread, it means you haven’t used good transitions. Tell her to stop you when she feels that you aren’t being perfectly clear.

Forget every rule of grammar, and just be 100 percent conversational. Write the way you talk. Long sentences, short sentences, exclamations and questions.

And get passionate. About 95 percent of all prospect packages fail to beat the control. Go for it!

And finally, here’s a bonus temptation to avoid: It’s really tempting to water down your copy and come up with something you’re certain the front office will approve. Don’t.

You can’t tinker with facts or change policy, but free up your style. If “they” don’t like it, negotiate. If you play it safe and stay close to the old control, you’ve wasted time and money. 

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