Print & Newsletter Strategy: Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries
Sending a 16-page mailer to 40,000 people sounds impressive.
Losing $10,000 per issue doing it is not.
I led a full strategic overhaul for their print newsletter, rebuilding the audience, restructuring the format, and recentering the content around donor impact, turning it from a money loser into a revenue driver.
Results
388% increase in donations per issue
3.86% response rate, up from 0.28%
9.94x overall ROI
Strategy
Audience & Data
Rebuilt the audience from the ground up by analyzing donor data to identify lapse patterns, finding that donors were at risk of dropping off after three years, and narrowing the mailing list from 40,000+ records to active donors and constituents within the last three years
Created a separate recapture campaign for deep-lapsed donors rather than continuing to mail them at a loss
Content & Format
Redesigned the format from a 16-page organizational bulletin to a streamlined 4-page donor-focused mailer built for skimmability
Recentered the content strategy around donor impact, leading with the most important stories, annual impact stats, and a lives-changed story that showed donors exactly where their support was going
Varied the format periodically to break pattern recognition and recapture donor attention, since even loyal audiences stop engaging when content becomes predictable
Strategy & Purpose
Shifted the newsletter's purpose from organizational news update to donor retention tool, keeping supporters engaged before they reached the lapse threshold
