BROWNE INNOVATION GROUP

Monday, January 24, 2011

BIG’s Blog: A Lesson from the U. S. Treasury

It turns out that even the U. S. Treasury can teach marketers a thing or two about connecting with today’s U. S. population.

According to a recent report, there are 9 million U. S. households that do not have a banking relationship. This means it is expensive for these households, mostly low income, to deal with refund checks on their taxes. To help, the U. S. Treasury is offering the option of issuing their refund through a debit card.

But, here is the surprise and lesson for marketers: the U. S. Treasury is not solely depending on a letter sent through the U. S. Postal Service to let all tax payers know about the debit card option. Rather, they are using multiple marketing channels in attempting to contact tax payers including email, phone and mail.

The U. S. Treasury tested the debit card option and found out that mailed letters alone didn’t get through to all of the tax payers. Their answer was to go multi-channel . . . and they are giving back money!

The lesson for nonprofit fund raisers: start getting your message out through multiple channels to increase the connection with potential donors.

-Mike

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