Old school acknowledgement letters can be slow-moving, cumbersome, and they often end up in the recycling bin. The NMSU Foundation swapped form letters for a monthly video sent via ThankView to all donors. Spoiler alert: Everyone is happier.
Is this you...?
Do you spend hours each week trying to mail merge, personalize, edit, and re-edit tiered acknowledgement letters?
Does stale boiler plate language have you feeling uninspired?
Are endless letter edits from Deans, CEOs, and VPs weighing on you?
Do you have a nagging sense that there’s got to be a more creative, more personalized way to say “thanks”?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may be a victim of antiquated acknowledgement letters.
Thanking a donor for their gift is a must. Of course. But the process of sending a printed and signed letter of thanks for each gift is pricey, time-consuming, and complicated.
And, let’s all be honest here. Is there really much difference between a run-of-the-mill acknowledgement letter and any form letter that lands in your mailbox?
Not really. Canned is canned. Mass mailing is mass mailing. Most of it hits the recycle bin unopened.
Swapping form letters for monthly 1-minute videos
We recently hosted the team from New Mexico State University Foundation on a webinar. (You can watch the whole thing, for free, here.)
The NMSU Foundation team was stuck in a familiar rut. Old school acknowledgement letters just weren’t doing the trick.
The team decided there had to be a better way to thank every donor. Instead of boiler-plate, canned form letters, they wanted to say “thank you!” in a way that is…
- Fun
- Quick
- Creative
- Heartfelt
- Inexpensive
Being donor centric means treating donors the way we would want to be treated. The Golden Rule of Donor Communications: What would you read, click on, open, smile at, forward, and respond to?
The NMSU team decided to give ThankView, EverTrue’s donor video platform, a try. ThankView lets you easily record, edit, and send personalized videos to a list of donors via email. And, there are tons of ways to customize each ThankView with your school’s branding and design so that your donors know each message is from you. (You can send yourself a test ThankView to see it in action in your inbox.)
Production process for monthly videos
We all know that some great ideas get stuck in the “idea” phase for way too long. The NMSU team wanted to put this video-thanking idea into action ASAP. In the interest of time, the team kept their first acknowledgment video short, simple, and sweet.
First, they asked some willing student workers to star in the video. They wrote a quick, loose, and fun script outline. They recorded, made some quick edits, and showed it to leadership to get the go-ahead.
And thus, the “Thank Every Aggie” campaign (affectionately known as T.E.A.) was born at NMSU. The first video went out via ThankView to over 17,000 donors – every person in their database who had made a gift, large or small, since 2017.
Every email was personalized with donors’ first names in the subject line of the email, and reference to a personal video. (“Hey, Bueller! NMSU made a video just for you!”)
Some things truly have a life of their own. What started out as an experiment to try a new way of thanking has turned into an ongoing, monthly, and super-successful program at NMSU.
Every month, on the 15th-20th of the month, all donors from the previous month receive a new, fun, quick video of thanks for their donation.
Yep, every single donor. Big, small, new, recurring, one-time, from one penny to a million dollars. One video, sent to all donors from the previous month.
Donors love it! Open rates for the “Thank Every Aggie” monthly videos via ThankView are over 60% (that’s double the industry average open rate). More and more students are getting involved in the videos. Heartfelt replies from donors flow in every month.
Keeping it fresh & fun
You may be asking… how does the team keep these monthly videos from becoming stale, canned, and boiler plate? In other words, how do they make sure these monthly videos don’t just become acknowledgement lettersvideos?
The team’s answer has been: Keep it fun. They have a rough 18-month outline of the themes for the monthly videos, but they ultimately let “fun” be their creative guide.
The NMSU team has figured out how to balance planning with spontaneity for their monthly ThankView videos. Here are some of their tips:
- Present a loose 18 month content plan to leadership
- Month by month, follow your gut and if a cool new idea comes up, run with it
- Keep it fun, AND keep leadership in the loop with video concepts
- Share ROI and monthly video metrics with leadership
Important note: Though the NMSU team has swapped boiler plate acknowledgement letters for awesome monthly videos, they haven’t given up on printed mail entirely. They still send acknowledgement cards for gift milestones(think bifold landscape cards with beautiful printed images on the front – the kind you might hang on your fridge).
They’re keeping all of the good things about printed, signed, and mailed acknowledgements alive. The cards celebrate milestones like first-time gifts and major donors, and they are much more personalized because they aren’t produced en-masse for every donor.
(We still love print, too. We’ve just taken a different approach to it. Check out our totally-customizable direct mail solution, Pledgemine.)
Metrics & MGO follow-up
By swapping acknowledgement letters for monthly ThankView videos, the NMSU team can now use the gift acknowledgement process to actually donor engagement.
In ThankView, the team can see which donors open the email, watch the videos, and how much of the video they watch. When donors watch the videos all the way through, they send those names to Major Gift Officers for follow-up, because it shows that they really care!
Through these monthly videos, the NMSU Foundation team has made gift acknowledgements “a personal thing.” Donors can reply directly to each video via email, and the responses are proof that this new approach is working.
“Oh, wow! This reminds me so much of being on campus. I always loved my time in Las Cruces.”
“ Thank you so much. I remember meeting my wife there, and that’s where we started our life together.”
“I have always wanted to go back. NMSU was such a big part of my life.”
“I remember being in Zuhl and studying there for finals!”
Takeaways
When gift acknowledgements produce surprise, delight, AND more engagement, you know you’re doing the right thing. You, too, can thank every single donor, every month. All it takes is a couple of hours!
- Start with what you have (even if it’s one student and one iPhone).
- Don’t wait for the perfect video idea. Just start.
- Track the video ROI and show it to leadership. This isn’t fluff, it’s strategy.
- Most of all: Have fun!
Got questions for the NMSU Foundation team about their monthly ThankView video process? Check out this comprehensive Q&A with the team. Or, watch a recording of our (free!) webinar with the NMSU Foundation team!
17k donors, 60% open rates
How the New Mexico State University Foundation built
a year-round stewardship strategy that actually scales
