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Fundraising Letters Are Easier To Write With AIDA
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Author: Alan Sharpe
Topic: Direct-Mail
Viewed: 47 time(s)
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Learn a lesson from professional direct mail copywriters. They
follow a time-tested format in their sales letters, a format
that you can also follow when writing direct mail fundraising
letters for your non-for-profit organization. All you need to
remember is AIDA. AIDA is an acrostic for the four things you
need to do, and the order you need to do them in, to write
compelling donation request letters. ATTENTION The A
stands for Attention. You need to grab it. Your envelope has to
grab attention, and the opening line of your letter needs to
grab attention. Your sole mission at this stage is to arrest
their donor?s attention so that they ignore the television,
leave the other mail on the kitchen table, and sit down and read
your letter right to the end. You can arrest attention in a
number of ways: * start with a gripping narrative * ask a
provocative question * state a seeming contradiction or paradox
* open with a scintillating (and relevant) quote * crack a joke
* start with the word ?you? INTEREST The I in AIDA stands
for Interest. Professional direct mail copywriters who make
their living by selling on paper know that arresting a reader?s
attention is not enough. That?s just the start. The letter has
to immediately stimulate some interest in the reader so that the
reader continues reading. Plenty of headlines and photographs
grab people?s attention as they leaf through newspapers and
magazines, but they only read the stories that interest them.
This means that as soon as you have grabbed your donor?s
attention, you must follow up with content that stimulates
interest. So what interests your donors? Changing the world.
Making a difference. Relieving suffering. Saving lives.
Transformation. Stimulate interest in your readers by showing
why your letter and your message are of interest to them right
now. DESIRE As advertising giant David Ogilvy said, ?You
can?t bore people into buying your product.? Your fundraising
appeal letter needs to move the heart and mind of each donor. It
needs to create in them (or, more accurately, awaken in them), a
Desire to respond to the case for support that you present on
paper. One way to awaken this desire is to offer an opportunity
for the donor to make an impact. Show in clear ways how they can
partner with your organization to impact their world for the
better. I?ll give you an example from a newsletter that I
received during the week that Hurricane Katrina devastated New
Orleans and the surrounding area in 2005. This is what the
publisher said in his introductory message: ?I've had the news
on all day today as I worked on getting this issue out. I
finally had to turn to a ball game. . . I was getting too
depressed. It's frustrating to see so many people in need and
not being able to help (at least not right away). I hope and
pray that all our readers in the areas hit by Katrina made it
out okay.? There is a man with a desire. The Category Five
hurricane arrested his attention. The devastation kept his
interest. And the human suffering, played out hourly on his
television screen, created in him a deep desire to help. A
desire so deep that he grew depressed because he could not
satisfy it. That?s the level of desire that you want to awaken
in your donor?s, except that you want to give them a really easy
way to satisfy it! And that?s where the final A in AIDA comes
in. ACTION The A in AIDA stands for Action, or Ask.
Professional direct mail copywriters always ask for the order.
They want their readers to buy, and buy today. This simply means
that every fundraising letter you write has to ask for the gift.
Informing donors is all very well, but your letter is designed
to raise funds. You can ask for the donation in a forceful way
or in a gentle way, but either way you must ask for it. If you
follow these four simple, time-tested steps every time you sit
down to craft an appeal letter, you will find that your writer?s
block doesn?t last as long. And you?ll find that your letters
take on a more logical, compelling format, one that should
increase your response rates. ??2005?Sharpe Copy Inc. You may
reprint this article online and in print provided the links
remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the
About the author:
Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer. Sign up
for free weekly tips like this at
http://www.FundraisingLetters.org
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