Fundraising Letters are Easier to Write with AIDA
by Alan Sharpe
Published on this site: September 3rd, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Learn a lesson from professional direct mail copywriters.
They follow a time-tested format in their sales letters, a
format that you can also follow when writing direct mail fundraising
letters for your non-for-profit organization. All you need
to remember is AIDA.
AIDA is an acrostic for the four things you need to do, and
the order you need to do them in, to write compelling donation
request letters.
ATTENTION
The A stands for Attention. You need to grab it. Your envelope
has to grab attention, and the opening line of your letter
needs to grab attention. Your sole mission at this stage is
to arrest their donor's attention so that they ignore the
television, leave the other mail on the kitchen table, and
sit down and read your letter right to the end.
You can arrest attention in a number of ways:
- start with a gripping narrative
- ask a provocative question
- state a seeming contradiction or paradox
- open with a scintillating (and relevant) quote
- crack a joke
- start with the word "you"
Interest
The I in AIDA stands for Interest. Professional direct mail
copywriters who make their living by selling on paper know
that arresting a reader's attention is not enough. That's
just the start. The letter has to immediately stimulate some
interest in the reader so that the reader continues reading.
Plenty of headlines and photographs grab people's attention
as they leaf through newspapers and magazines, but they only
read the stories that interest them. This means that as soon
as you have grabbed your donor's attention, you must follow
up with content that stimulates interest.
So what interests your donors? Changing the world. Making
a difference. Relieving suffering. Saving lives. Transformation.
Stimulate interest in your readers by showing why your letter
and your message are of interest to them right now.
Desire
As advertising giant David Ogilvy said, "You can't bore
people into buying your product." Your fundraising appeal
letter needs to move the heart and mind of each donor. It
needs to create in them (or, more accurately, awaken in them),
a desire to respond to the case for support that you present
on paper. One way to awaken this desire is to offer an opportunity
for the donor to make an impact. Show in clear ways how they
can partner with your organization to impact their world for
the better.
I'll give you an example from a newsletter that I received
during the week that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans
and the surrounding area in 2005. This is what the publisher
said in his introductory message:
"I've had the news on all day today as I worked on
getting this issue out. I finally had to turn to a ball
game.
I was getting too depressed. It's frustrating to see so many
people in need and not being able to help (at least not
right away). I hope and pray that all our readers in the
areas hit
by Katrina made it out okay."
There is a man with a desire. The Category Five hurricane
arrested his attention. The devastation kept his interest.
And the human suffering, played out hourly on his television
screen, created in him a deep desire to help. A desire so
deep that he grew depressed because he could not satisfy it.
That's the level of desire that you want to awaken in your
donor's, except that you want to give them a really easy way
to satisfy it! And that's where the final A in AIDA comes
in.
Action
The A in AIDA stands for Action, or Ask. Professional direct
mail copywriters always ask for the order. They want their
readers to buy, and buy today. This simply means that every
fundraising letter you write has to ask for the gift. Informing
donors is all very well, but your letter is designed to raise
funds. You can ask for the donation in a forceful way or in
a gentle way, but either way you must ask for it.
If you follow these four simple, time-tested steps every
time you sit down to craft an appeal letter, you will find
that your writer's block doesn't last as long. And you'll
find that your letters take on a more logical, compelling
format, one that should increase your response rates.
Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer.
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