Creative
Riveting the Prospect's Interest

Often when a discussion of creativity comes up, direct mail creative types will cite and rely on their previous work for large clients to impress prospective clients.

So before getting to the meat of the discussion of creative, let us pay tribute to this required tradition. At Griswold & Griswold, Inc. the copy and package design is created by one of the most experienced and successful individuals in the direct mail industry.

When you employ Griswold & Griswold, Inc., your direct mail packages have been handcrafted by a principal of the agency with 27 years experience. Griswold & Griswold, Inc. has and continues to create packages for some of the largest and most successful programs in America.

Among many others, our creative services have been selected by two of the last three Republican presidents for their re-election, the United States Navy Memorial, a number of America's leading think tanks, two of the largest political party organizations in America, Operation Smile and a range of leading charitable organizations that care for the poor and suffering.

For several of our clients, Griswold & Griswold, Inc., has produced for many years a direct mail program that over many years has consistently generated millions of net dollars.

Several of our Griswold packages are among the longest running prospect fund raising letters in American history.

What's more, as a result of an orchestrated effort across many areas, this remarkable prospect program has brought in new donors at an exceptionally low cost--often just a fraction of their inception contribution amount. Further, Griswold & Griswold, Inc. has a long history of creating donor renewal programs that motivate donors to give over their lifetimes an average of at least 2.5 times their inception contribution and many times much more.

Having touched on our past performance and although we are proud of our past success, innovation and new ideas are all that count in today's ever changing and increasingly cynical market place.

So let us look forward not back.

The challenge for most organizations with growing but still limited name identification and a mission that is not fully understood by prospective donors is to establish enough credibility that cold prospects will donate. Our clients often harvest more donors with fewer mailings and thus a lower cost by using signers whose name or title can lend credibility to the mailings.

But as powerful as these will be we must do more.

Among other steps, we pay special attention to converting any one time donors to multiple donors since we know that once a second contribution is made the likelihood of additional donations increases dramatically.

Further, we pay special attention by mailing additional packages to convert non-donors who express support but are failing just short of making a contribution.

We focus on renewing lapsed donors first through mailing them proven successful prospect packages and then suggesting our clients sometimes investigate calling their donors.

To further enhance our client's credibility in the packages we review the outstanding press coverage that they often receive and graphically add a number of clips and quotes to the artwork for our packages. These news items along with testimonials can be of enormous benefit in harvesting more donors with fewer mailings, all of which lends to our clients raising more net money.

Ultimately, the entire creative challenge for any client is to select the one or possibly two missions of a client that will be attractive to prospective donors and formula those missions into a clear and moving offer that the donors would want to participate in and financially support.

The selection and framing of a emotionally powerful offer is the single most important key to successful direct mail.