I just read a poignant blog post from Seth Godin called “Mobile Blindness.”
The gist of it is that you are so inundated with information through your phone that you only scan the surface of information, so you become blinded and rarely dig into real information. I know that is true for me most of the day.
This is why marketers are focused on “headlines… gossip and thin promises,” as Seth put it. Marketers are shortening blog posts, tweets, etc. because the audience rarely reads the long version of anything, anymore.
This made me think about how you are cultivating and stewarding your relationships with your major donors. It’s so easy now to send a quick email, text, online survey, etc. to our donors, (which are all great ways to connect to a donor), but perhaps instead of “speeding up” our communication, in order to really grab their attention, you should slow it down.
What if you considered focusing on your “A” level donors today and actually wrote all of them a handwritten letter? Okay, maybe not all of them, but how about five of them today. In that letter talk about how their gifts are making an impact on your non-profit, discuss some of the challenges you are facing as an organization, and ask the donors for their thoughts.
End the letter by saying you’d like to have time to sit with them and listen. Tell them you will call them in a week or so to follow up, or even give them a specific date you’ll call.
Then get a plain envelope, hand-address it and put a stamp on it.
Why not carve out some time each day to do this?
This is really slowing it down. But in today’s communication climate, slow gets the attention. No one can resist a real handwritten letter. No one.
I’m not saying you should stop doing all the other things you do to communicate with a donor – but consider that slowing it down can also be extremely effective, yet very personal and touching to your donor.
What other ways can you “slow it down” with your donor that can grab your donor’s attention? Let us know.
Jeff