BIG’s Blog: What this Article Means for Nonprofit Fund Raisers – Part Five

Over my last few blogs, I have been examining the implications from the article in the Direct Marketing News – Direct Daily that two-thirds of all purchases and half of all transactions would be done over mobile devices by 2015.

As I close out this blog series on this important article, I can’t close out this series without addressing the last two paragraphs of the article. The breakfast forum at Google’s offices in New York was a DMA event for the Google executives to share this information about the coming growth in transactions through mobile, and in attendance was the CEO of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Mr. Lawrence Kimmel.

I am not going to paraphrase Mr. Kimmel’s remarks as they were reported in the article, rather I am going to lay them out verbatim and then comment on them.

Mr. Kimmel urged the attendees (attendees at the DMA event) not to abandon direct mail for digital. He said that direct mail spending increased 2.2% in 2010 and predicted it will grow anywhere from 3% to 5% this year. “Everyone moved away from direct mail because digital was the new kid on the block,” Kimmel said. “But direct mail is a $47 billion business. It’s incredibly important and it still works.”

Did you read anywhere in the article that anyone said 'stop' using direct mail?

We live in a world where speed of change is accelerating. If Google’s Mr. Shapiro is only 25% right in his prediction of transactions through mobile, that is a sea change in how the vast majority of people do transactions, not to mention how they get their information. How many paper checks do you write today versus ten years ago?

Poor Mr. Kimmel of the Direct Marketing Association; he is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. On one side are all of the marketing organization members of the DMA, including nonprofit fund raisers, who need to take this Google information very seriously and try to figure out how to alter their marketing strategies to deal with the fast changing landscape. But, on the other side are all of the DMA corporate direct mail partners that are underwriting the DMA. Did Mr. Kimmel not make the point that direct mail is a $47 billion business?

Of course, direct mail is not going away tomorrow or next year or the year after that, but nonprofit fund raisers that are dependent on direct mail for a majority of their donations today need to seriously consider the implications of the changing marketing communications environment and adjust their strategies accordingly.

-Mike

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