I’ve been meaning to write about how my colleague, Jen, pulled a quick one on my office mates and I a few weeks ago.
Don’t worry it was all in the name of fundraising!
One morning she walks in with a bunch of coffees and hot chocolates from Starbucks and tells us to help ourselves. All excited, we selfishly help ourselves not thinking anything was up as generous Jen has done these sorts of things before with donuts, bagels and other goodies.
An hour goes by, our complimentary drinks either just finished or just the last sip left, and generous Jen starts to hand out these white envelopes with our names on them. 
We open the envelope to find an appeal letter from the MS Society of Canada and a personalized handwritten note from Jen that went something like this:
“Hi Dominic, I hope you enjoyed your drink from Starbucks today. Please join me in paying it forward to the MS Society…”
So I got a free coffee… but not really. Good one Jen!
Needless to say her little campaign went pretty well. She ended up with close to a 50% response rate with an average donation of $20, which is quite impressive I must say.
So how was she able to pull this off so effectively? Well, she did it with proven techniques we see all the time in direct marketing, for example utilizing the free gift, the handwritten note and the targeting of her best prospects. She just applied these techniques in a slightly different way.
You may want to consider how to make your next campaign fresh using these proven techniques as well!
