Tweet Are you sincere about reducing marketing costs for your nonprofit? Then you’ll want to read this short post. Right now, I’m reading the biography of Steve Jobs , and one of the reasons that Apple was so successful under his leadership was his obsession with simplifying things. People love Apple products because they’re easy to use. With marketing, it’s often difficult to embrace simplicity, yet in my experience, campaigns that are both simple and less expensive, often outperform complex campaigns that require larger budgets. With this in mind, I wanted to shine a light on a very simple nonprofit direct mail marketing campaign that got so many of the subtle, yet critically important elements exactly right. As a vendor who works closely with the nonprofit community to process direct mail marketing campaigns, I feel pressure every day to pinch pennies for charitable organizations so that they can get more out of their limited marketing dollars. The challenge is that many of my cost-saving suggestions fall on deaf ears, so when I see someone who gets it right, I feel obligated to share. So what’s so special about this simple campaign? 1) Single-color ink : Just about everyone has a color printer in their office or home, so the default mindset is that everything should be printed in color-right? The reality is that for quantities fewer than 2,000 pieces, single-color printing can save substantial amounts of money-this is especially true with envelopes. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida actually has a 3-color logo, but they also have an alternate single-color version that was used for this mailing project. What about your organization? How many colors are in your logo? Do you have a single-color version? How would it impact the response of donors or volunteers if you started using a single-color version of your logo on some of your marketing? My suspicion is that it wouldn’t have any impact at all to use a single-color version. If you have board members who are obsessed about always printing a full-color version of your logo, this may be a …

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Case Study: Nonprofit Direct Mail Marketing: Why Simple Is Better