PostNord, which is jointly owned by the Danish and Swedish governments, confirmed at the start of March that it will deliver its last letters in Denmark on 30 December 2025, due to a 90% decline in letters since 2000.

An ISOBRO document says that 30% of members use PostNord for communication and fundraising. Meanwhile others use a private company, DAO/Bladkompagnie, which ISOBRO says is “subject to the same requirements as PostNord” and is cheaper for letter delivery.

ISOBRO’s document notes that while 10 other companies hold a license to distribute mail, DAO/Bladkompagnie is the only company currently offering this service, giving it an effective monopoly from 2026. It adds:

“ISOBRO will therefore keep an eye on whether other companies express their interest in distributing letters, and if not, we will engage in political dialogue about this.

“If more players start offering nationwide mail delivery, competition in the market may push prices down further.”

‘A personal approach’

Kim Lerborg, an expert in direct mail who has worked for charities including Dansk Flygtningehjælp (Danish Refugee Council) and SOS Børnebyerne (SOS Children’s Villages), is quoted on ISOBRO’s website reminding the sector that it can still be a valuable channel, even in a digital age.

“An email with a donation button drowns in the inbox, and if you don’t act on it right away, it disappears into the feed. The physical letter may be left out on the kitchen table, meaning you can return to the message several times. This strengthens the relationship with the organisation’s cause – and increases the likelihood of a donation.

Change across Europe

PostNord also delivers letters in Sweden and this service will remain unchanged, despite the change in Denmark. The company also has some operations in Norway and Finland.

Meanwhile, other European postal services are reducing services as they consider their future in a digital world.

The Guardian reported that Germany’s Deutsche Post will be cutting 8,000 jobs to reduce costs. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Mail service was privatised in 2015 and is now considering reduced frequency deliveries of second class post.

In Norway, letters are delivered on every other weekday, while in 2017 a rural post office in Spain was the focus of media attention when its opening hours were reduced to just 15 minutes a day during August.

European Union plans for mandatory electronic invoicing will further reduce postal volumes in the bloc and other countries when introduced over the coming years.

Photo by PostNord

In June, Swissfundraising, the Swiss fundraising association, presented its first award for the ‘Best Fundraising Mailing in Switzerland’. Reputation effect on the sector and innovative strength were evaluated, as well as economic criteria such as average donation, and response or yield per item. However, the award stands out from other prizes in the fundraising community because the majority of the criteria relate to ethical principles and their implementation.

The Swissfundraising board’s decision to create such an award was based on the conviction that, on the one hand, fundraising mailings are and will remain a central instrument in the fundraising mix and greatly impact how the respective organisations are perceived, as well as the sector as a whole. On the other hand, despite the unbroken willingness to donate, there is increasing concern or even rejection of fundraising mailings among the Swiss population. These trends must be taken seriously and addressed.

Critical attitudes in the Swiss population

Six years ago, a study commissioned by Alliance Sud, an alliance of Swiss development organisations, showed that, in addition to identifying with the goals and work of aid organisations, the population also held some negative feelings towards the organisations themselves and particularly towards their fundraising.

Worryingly, this included negative stereotypes such as inefficiency or bureaucracy. Lack of transparency and authenticity due to exaggeration or oversimplification were also assumed, particularly in fundraising mailings. Rejection of the stereotype of misery and of the paternalistic narrative was also central. At the same time, the messages did not always seem to reach their audience as desired because the language was seen as often being technical, full of jargon and not very conversational. Furthermore, the study found that the credibility of fundraising mailings was in danger of dwindling if only success stories were communicated without self-criticism or discussion of challenges, problems and failures.

Ethical principles for strengthening donation mailings

The important insights gained in this study and the subsequent discussions led to the creation of the ‘Manifesto for Responsible Communication’. In 2020 Swissfundraising also took up the discussion with the aim of promoting ethical practice in fundraising mailings and thus simultaneously contributing to the long-term acceptance of this fundraising tool. The idea was to create an award for best practice examples to raise awareness in the industry. To this end, Swissfundraising has further developed the conclusions of Alliance Sud on ethical principles. The ethical principles for responsible fundraising summarise the aspects outlined above in eight points:

1. The self-image and values of the organisation are communicated.
2. The objectives of the work, its impact and how it is measured are made transparent.
3. The language is appropriate for the target group, comprehensible and dialogue oriented.
4. An authentic picture of the work and its context is conveyed.
5. Contributors speak for themselves and are respectfully portrayed at eye level.
6. Challenges, setbacks and problems are addressed self-critically.
7. A sustainable solution perspective is shown.
8. The communication is relevant for the addressees and mobilises them.

Practical outputs

Hanspeter Bigler

About Hanspeter Bigler

Hanspeter Bigler has been working in fundraising for 25 years in nonprofit organisations and also as a consultant. He is a member of the executive board of Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), heads the communication and mobilisation division and is deputy director. Since 2024, he has also been president of Swissfundraising, the Swiss fundraising association. Hanspeter Bigler studied ethics and political philosophy as well as contemporary history at the University of Fribourg/Switzerland, is a certified NPO manager VMI and holds a master’s degree in communication management.

Picture by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

In the UK, recent research by JICMAIL shows that 95% of consumers engaged with direct mail in the first quarter of 2023, highlighting the important opportunity the channel offers for charities to build long-lasting relationships with supporters.

At Sue Ryder, which provides palliative, neurological, and bereavement support, we have found it has the highest response rates and can drive action other channels simply can’t, whether that’s getting supporters to donate, encouraging pledges or even increasing engagement. In fact, our Christmas 2022 mail campaign saw a donation response rate that was nearly 1300% higher than our Christmas email campaign.

To ensure your appeals work as hard as they can to deliver powerful, important messages which stay with supporters, here are some tips.

1. Target your audience

Maximising your return on investment is crucial to an appeal’s success.

One of the main advantages of direct mail is that your audience can be carefully curated, using specific selection criteria. Using demographics, location and giving history to segment your data and then only mailing segments that you know are likely to respond will ensure that you don’t waste vital funds.

In 2023, Sue Ryder started to move towards a data-led approach with mailing selections. This shift away from the ‘scattergun’ approach of mailing people on our database (some of whom were unlikely to reply!) has increased response rates. We undertake segment analysis at the end of each appeal so we are clear on expected response rates and average gifts, and more importantly, net income and return on investment. This allows us to effectively plan for future campaigns and predict income levels. Removing segments that have a net income we don’t see as viable allows us to invest in other areas, such as cold acquisition of supporters to build up our cash audience.

Our recent emergency Cost of Dying appeal in June focused on the difficulties facing hospices in the UK during the cost-of-living crisis. Sue Ryder is seeing around a 20% increase in the cost of providing palliative and bereavement care, yet our funding has increased by less than 3%. We wanted to create an urgent multi-channel campaign, including direct mail, to appeal to our donors during this ‘Cost of Dying crisis’. As net income was an important factor in our consideration, we analysed our latest direct mail segmentation to assess where we’d likely see a negative net income. We then compared these figures to cold direct mail list projections and decided to remove segments with a predicted lower net income. This enabled us to spend where we felt would bring in the greatest return.

2. Create a relevant, eye-catching letter

Another vital consideration is the pack the audience will receive. Your storytelling matters here.

To drive response, you’ll need to concisely demonstrate the problem, solution, and impact. For our Cost of Dying appeal, we wanted to demonstrate the problem in a powerful, impactful way. We chose to use statistics on the cost of care increasing by 20% and our funding increasing by less than 3% side-by-side. Highlighting these statistics using bold capitals made the problem immediately clear. We then emphasised the solution throughout the pack. On the reverse of the donation form, we included the problem “More people than ever need our help. But costs are rising all the time” and the solution “Please donate today to help us get through this Cost of Dying crisis” as coloured headings to make it clear how supporters could help.

Whether you’re using a creative agency or creating the pack in-house, you’ll need to carefully consider every part of it – from the envelope to the copy, and the photos. Sue Ryder used eye-tracking software on the first version of the Cost of Dying pack to ensure it was working as hard for us as it could. It showed that reader’s eyes were drawn to the hard-hitting statistics and the donation requests. We also used emotive photos of real Sue Ryder nurses, looking straight at the camera for maximum impact.

Finally, try to use fixing points wherever possible, from putting wording in bold, underlining or bullet points to highlight the important information. This is what the donor will read first, so ensure these tell the full story whilst creating enough intrigue for them to continue reading the entire pack. And always use a P.S – this is where eyes will be drawn first!

3. Try to personalise as much as possible within the letter

The beauty of direct mail for charities is the ability to reach thousands of people with one letter. However, this can be a downfall if donors feel they’re just receiving a mass marketing letter. That’s why personalisation is vital to your appeal’s success.

Taking a personalised approach will strengthen the relationship between your charity and the supporter. Utilise as much data as you have on them to make the appeal as unique to them as possible – referencing their previous support, using variable prompting and their location (if relevant) will allow them to connect more with the appeal.

For our Cost of Dying appeal, we had variable copy for different groups of supporters, including our mid-value supporters, regular givers, and lapsed donors. This allowed us to reference their type of previous support, acknowledging that we were aware of what they’d previously done for the charity. Variable prompting was also key to the appeal’s success – we used gift prompting that was relevant to the last gift they had given. Finally, we utilised their location to reference their local hospice. The combination of this personalisation led to great success for the campaign, reaching our overall Week 12 target at Week 5.

If your charity has the resource, you could also consider hand-writing parts of the appeal, for example, the envelope address or even a compliment slip within the pack for your top donors. We tried this for the first time in Spring 2023 for one of our twice-yearly newsletters by hand-writing envelopes to our mid-value donors. We were expecting a slight uplift, but we saw a 42% increase in our budgeted income from the segments that received these envelopes. This cemented the theory that our mid-value donors appreciate a personal approach from us.

4. Develop your call to action

The next step is to ensure your solution is as simple as possible. Your call to action has to be clear, concise and compelling.

Your audience need to know what they can do, right at the very moment they receive the letter. They can donate to help hospices. They can vote for your charity. They can give you their email address. Let them know what they need to do in a clear, simple way.

Repeat your call-to-action throughout the mailing. We asked supporters for a donation four times in the double page letter for the Cost of Dying appeal, with further requests on the footer of the letter and within the donation form. We also ensured that despite there being one ask (to donate), we offered multiple ways for the supporter to do this: via post, phone or online. This allows people to respond to your call-to-action in the most convenient way for them, removing barriers.

Most importantly, when offering the solution, you also need to provide donors with information on the impact this solution will have – the more tangible the better. Using shopping lists on the pack is the most common way to do this for appeals, providing detailed information on what different amounts could achieve. Our Cost of Dying pack was no exception. We were fortunate to have a very tangible ask amount of £25, which could provide an hour of care. This was highlighted in the pack and helped donors understand where their money could be spent.

5. Test, test, test!

The only way to improve your appeals is to find out what works best for your donors (and what doesn’t!). A common mistake is relying too heavily on internal opinions about creative – it’s important to remember that only your audience can let you know what they will respond to.

This is where you’ll need to be as data-led as possible. Split your segments so that similar audiences receive different packs to assess where response is stronger. Using A/B testing is the easiest way: simply split your segments in half and send different versions of the pack to each one. When we were creating the Cost of Dying email campaign, we’d received conflicting feedback from stakeholders about the effect of mentioning the cost-of-living crisis in communications to supporters. Some stakeholders had heard this reduced response while others heard it increased it. So, we decided to split test. Whilst we found that this increased response to our email, this clearly wasn’t the case for other charities, showing the importance of testing on your own audience.

Remember that what works for certain segments in your audience won’t work for others. Cold and lapsed audiences won’t have as strong a connection with your cause as active audiences. Therefore, they require different messaging and potentially even different pack formats.

Finally, you’ll need to have a process in place to report and analyse results, preferably at a segment level. If you’re able to track the success of your mailings than you can adjust and evolve your appeals moving forward. A testing strategy for future direct mail is essential to continue to optimise and tweak your campaigns to achieve the best possible response.

6. Use a multi-channel approach

Integrating your direct mail with email, SMS, social media and potentially other offline advertising, is important, because when you engage with donors through multiple channels, they see your message more. Multiple touchpoints reinforce the problem, solution and impact in their minds and will drive response. Cast your net as wide as possible as research shows that the more times a donor sees your message, the better the response.

The halo effect of using a multi-channel approach however can be difficult to measure. The success of each channel can’t be monitored purely in terms of income. If a donor receives a letter from your charity, sees an advert on social media and then finally responds to the email they’ve seen, it doesn’t mean the other channels haven’t played their part – they all work together to drive success.

At Sue Ryder, we align our direct mail campaigns with emails, paid social ads and organic social media, as well as aligning the messaging on our website and landing pages. We’re also looking at introducing SMS later this year to increase the number of touchpoints a donor has, as well as allowing them to respond on a channel they prefer.

You’ll need to ensure that the campaign messaging and look is consistent throughout. Messages need to collectively make sense. Our Email Team base the campaign emails they build on the direct mail messaging whilst our Digital Team build the landing pages using the same prompt amounts – for example £25 could help pay for an hour of care, images and messaging in the mailing.

It’s important to use the same stories, images and call-to-action in order to pull your messages together. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And you’ll see that persistence pays off.

About Sam Slough

Samantha Slough has been working within the Individual Giving sector for nine years, most recently as the senior individual giving manager at Sue Ryder. Prior to that, she worked at Children with Cancer UK for six years, leading both the supporter acquisition and retention teams.

She can be found on LinkedIn.

Picture by Cottonbro Studios on Pexels

With some EU states proposing that residents should not receive unaddressed mailings unless they have opted in, our public affairs columnist Patrick Gibbels explains how this might impact charity fundraising and underlines EFA’s role in challenging these proposals.

In recent times, proposals have been raised in five European Union Member States (Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany) to change the current opt-out approach for receiving unaddressed printed advertising to an opt-in approach. Many non-profits rely on these ‘door drops’ to build awareness within the local community and beyond and encourage supporters to donate, raising concerns about the impact of restrictions to this fundraising channel.

Door drops and the opt-out system are a part of the EU’s 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. If the EU were to adopt an opt-in approach, non-profits would no longer be able to send unaddressed mailings to any households, unless they proactively permit them to do so. Few people are likely to do so, which would have a significant negative impact on fundraising organisations and their opportunity to rebuild income levels at a time where many are facing critical funding shortfalls.

The European Fundraising Association has signed a joint letter (along with Intergraf, FEDMA, the European Letterbox Marketing Association and others), calling on the European Commission to address this issue with the Member States concerned. The letter asks for clarification that any restrictions on this form of advertising need to take into account the principle of proportionality and must be compliant with EU law.

The General Data Protection Regulation has significantly curbed the way in which charities and fundraisers can reach out to potential donors. Moreover, the Covid-19 crisis has made it impossible to physically approach donors and make collections or to organise events.

Unaddressed printed postal mailing is one of the few remaining viable alternatives.

Recently, the Belgian Red Cross had to cancel its annual event whereby it sells stickers at crossroads and other busy places. Alternatively, they distributed 770,000 stickers in letterboxes across Belgium and called on people to donate online. Actions like these, which aim to offset some of the negative consequences of the current crisis, would no longer be possible under the Member States’ proposals.

Whilst it is understandable that consumers need a certain level of protection against targeted advertising and the (ab)use of their personal data, printed and unaddressed postal mailings do not pose a threat to anybody’s privacy. Usually, a simple ‘NO unaddressed mail’ sign or sticker is enough for a household not to receive these. An opt-in would indeed be disproportionate and unrealistic, as very few people will actively go out and place some sort of ‘YES’ sticker or signage. Therefore, many philanthropic organisations would be affected substantially by such a measure.

EFA will continue working with its partners, to sensitise decision-makers of the negative consequences further restrictions on donor outreach would have for the sector as well as its beneficiaries.

Joint response to Anti Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing

In another push for better lawmaking, EFA has contributed to a joint response (with ECNL, EFC and DAFNE) to the European Commission consultation on the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Action Plan. The group will continue to collaborate to finalise its submission to the consultation, which closes on 29 July 2020.

Related articles: View from Brussels

Follow Patrick @GPA_Brussels

Patrick Gibbels, Gibbels Public Affairs

Through its Direct Mail Panel, Swissfundraising tracks direct mail trends, enabling nonprofit organisations to benchmark their response rates against their peers. The data is based on ten years of direct mail activity and now incorporates over 60 nonprofits.

In 2018, participating organisations generated 120 million Swiss francs from their direct mail activity. Although the number of campaigns was 15% lower than in the previous year, the average circulation rose by 54% and yielded an additional one million francs.

Around 70 supporter acquisition campaigns also went out from the participating organisations in 2018, with an average response rate of just under 2%, and yielding an average donation of around 45 francs, for a cost per letter of 1.70 francs.

Looking at the data for the past decade, the Panel reveals that the average donation has increased by around 20% to 65 francs, but response rates have decreased.

Overall, organisations in French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland have fared better than in German-speaking Switzerland, with the response rate showing less of a decline and a more significant increase in the value of donations.

Now in its 25^th year, Swissfundraising represents a growing membership of over 770 individual fundraisers.  A clear majority of its members are women (60%) although there is a male majority among consultants and service providers. 88% of members are registered as German speaking.

Swissfundraising has revealed a number of key findings and trends from its Direct Mail Panel from the past seven years. The Panel allows fundraisers to upload their own direct mail activity data and benchmark their results against those of other users. Users are able to observe which months of the year and which regions of the country perform the strongest, and how response rates and average donation amounts have changed over the last seven years.

Through analysing the data submitted to the Panel since 2009, Swiss Fundraising has revealed that while response rates of letters to current donors declined from 11% in 2009 to approximately 9% last year, this current figure has remained almost the same since 2013. Response rates to acquisition campaigns also remain fairly steady, falling slightly from 2.4% to 2.2%. Response rates to unaddressed mail have also remained steady at around 0.6%.

Average donation amounts have risen slightly since 2009; up from 53 to 58 Franks (47.8 to 52.3 Euros) for current donors. However, this changes year by year rising from 35 to 45 Franks (31.6 to 40.6 Euros) for new donors responding direct mail and from 55 to 60 Franks (49.6 to 54.1 Euros) for donors responding to unaddressed mail.

The Panel data also reveals a trend in the acquisition of new donors with an increasing number of campaigns using unaddressed mail, and a declining use of direct mail. Two companies have risen to dominate the list broking industry, while a number of others have seen a decline in the number of lists they have sold since 2009.

Finally, in terms of direct mail activity throughout the calendar year, the data shows significant differences in the number of campaigns printed each month. July, for example, sees fewer campaigns sent out with a corresponding increase in response that is higher than other time of the year except the Christmas period. November is by far the busiest month of the year for campaigns.