Our 8 Top Tips for Effective Charity Business Response Envelopes
Not all Charity Business Response Envelopes are created equal, in fact the design of your charity’s BRE can have a big impact on its success.
We handle hundreds of thousands of charity responses every year, so we know a thing or two about the type of BRE envelopes that work best – and deliver the fastest results – for our clients. So, we thought we’d share some top tips on designing the best envelopes. Read on to discover more.
Our sophisticated mail-handling equipment opens and sorts our charity clients’ responses in the blink of an eye, speeding up the process of banking and thanking and getting campaign funds over to our charity clients as quickly as possible. Any exceptions which can’t be processed by our machines are pulled out for manual handling, which slows things down.
The other aspect to consider is how user-friendly are your BREs? Forms which require greater Supporter-Effort are unlikely to be filled in right to the end, and user inaccuracies are likely to be higher too. The better your forms, the better they will be for your supporters’ experience and engagement, and potentially supporter retention, will be higher too.
Following a few quick and easy design guidelines can lead to faster processing, improved supporter experience, fewer exceptions, and less manual intervention – all of which mean faster banking, greater efficiencies, and quicker results all round for you! Win-win.
Here are our top 8 tips for designing great BREs:
- DL or C6 envelopes work best
- Campaign identifier clearly visible on the envelope. Could be a code, image, or text
- Avoid horseshoe gum envelopes
- Checklist on the back of the envelope ensures supporter is more likely to include everything needed
- Provide two to three reminders on the Checklist, such as:
a. have you included the donation
b. have you included the form
c. did you sign the cheque, etc - Avoid opt-ins and opt-outs on the envelope. This type of option requires manual handling, which then incurs extra expense and time
- Avoid free gifts such as pens, coasters, stickers, etc. These are often returned by donors who assume they are saving the charity money by doing so
- Avoid glue gum dots or other sticky substances
We are always happy to check our charity clients’ BREs at no extra cost, advising on aspects which improve performance and keep costs down. And of course we offer this free service to clients before anything is printed and sent out to supporters. This ensures that only well-designed envelopes go out to supporters, delivering the best results for our clients and the best experience for their supporters.
Our Chief Commercial Officer (Charity Division), Scott Gray, says:
“Every aspect of Charity response handling is crucial for measuring the success of fundraising campaigns. From BRE, response forms, call handling, variable payment methods and personalised print-on-demand thanking, each one demands a level of detail to make sure the process runs smoothly and we achieve in giving the best possible supporter experience.”
If you would like to know more about our charity expertise and how we could support you and your supporters, we would love to hear from you. If you would like to see how we could support you and improve your bottom line, please contact us here.
High quality solutions designed to help you raise your charity’s impact today.