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That was some speech in Denver last night. Ok, so few of us will ever reach the heights of masters of their art like Bill Clinton, but lessons aplenty for how to communicate. You can watch his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night here. Don’t bother reading it, you have to hear it. And that’s the first thing to remember. A great letter should sound like someone is speaking directly to you. If it doesn’t read like you’d say it, tear it up and start again. And look at the words. A beautiful combination of stirring rhetoric with down-to-earth, folksy, chatty language. He talks to you, not down to you. So get rid of all that organisation-speak, that jargon and the carefully worded descriptions of your programmes. Talk about your work as...

Two campaigns for Dublin Samaritans. If you’d like to support Dublin Samaritans, please click here. More than 500 people in Ireland took their lives last year. We don’t know how many of them may have called Samaritans but we do know that for many people just listening helps. … Many are afraid of being judged, of being told to “pull themselves together”. That’s why they feel safer speaking to someone they don’t know. That’s why they speak to Samaritans. Technorati Tags: fundraising, samaritans, direct mail, charity...

Our Christmas campaign for Dublin Simon. (If you’d like to support Dublin Simon Community, click here.) Homelessness is hard enough, but for Mark, stuck in a bettered wheelchair and unable to get around as well as everyone else, life’s suddenly become a lot harder. He can’t get upstairs, so most of the shelter beds in Dublin are off-limits to him, and now he’s even more vulnerable than he was before. Technorati Tags: Dublin Simon, charity, fundraising, direct mail...

Today is the deadline for postaim and marks the end of the busiest couple of months for us at Ask Direct. With a couple of exceptions, all of the Christmas campaigns are now written, designed, printed, packed and posted. Time to catch a breath, and update the blog! I’ll be posting up some of our campaigns here over the next few days. First, our Christmas appeal for the Irish Hospice Foundation, which recounts the experiences of Deirdre and Colin whose parents both spent their last days under hospice care… Everyone was wonderful, and if my mother needed anything, like more pain relief, it just happened. She never had to wait or suffer unnecessarily. It gave everyone a feeling of calm and peace, and though it sounds odd, of well being too. You couldn’t have a better end,...

There’s some interesting figures in July’s Professional Fundraising for direct mail repsonse rates in the UK Quoting the Institute of Fundraising’s Fundratios study, they report that average warm direct mail response rates rose in 04/05 to 13.9% from 11.8%. While average cold response rates decreased from 1.4% to 1.3%. Of course, averages can mask a huge amount of variation. And there are many factors that influence response. So before you get too distraught / ecstatic having compared these figures to your last campaign, bear the following in mind. Lower asks will give higher response rates. Fewer people will respond to a direct debit ask than to a cash ask. And some charities will be more cold-mail friendly than others. So if you’re fundraising for the National...

Here’s our latest campaign for the Irish Hospice Foundation. We’re running two appeals, one focused on children’s palliative care, the other on their Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme. The campaign uses a number of different media - direct mail, door drops and newspaper inserts. We’re going to be updating our ‘clients’ section soon to gather all our work in one, easy-to-find place. Technorati Tags: irish hospice foundation, fundraising, direct mail...

For the last few years, pretty much every charity I’ve spoken to has felt that response rates to direct mail appeals have been declining. People have put it down to over-mailing, emergency-fatigue, greater competition, a more selfish society or a more cynical public. But I wonder, is it becuase we’ve all been using the wrong typeface? To explain. I’ve been reading Colin Wheildon’s book, Type and Layout. Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes. It’s a fantastic, empirical study of how typography, design and layout effect reader comprehension. Does you layout make it easier to understand your message, or harder? One of the most striking findings has to do with the choice of typeface for body copy in printed materials. Wheildon’s study showed...