Pledgemine joins the EverTrue family!

On this special episode of the RAISE Podcast, Brent gets to know our newest EverTrue colleague and the founder and managing partner of Pledgemine, Todd Moxley. 

Here’s the thing: for much of EverTrue’s history, we have been evangelizing new… well, everything. New concepts, new strategies, new approaches for building relationships with donors. 

Direct mail is one engagement method that is used at every single organization that we work with. And while direct mail is a new channel for EverTrue, it’s certainly not new to our customers. If you work in advancement and you’re reading this, you’re already investing time and resources into direct mail efforts, and have been for a long time.

As much as we’ve been champions of digital, social media, and video at EverTrue, we had to dig in more to the world of hard-copy printed mailings . And so we started asking our advancement friends… why do you continue to invest in direct mail? What are your direct mail pain points? What would make it better? 

Here’s what we heard:

Direct mail works. Direct mail open rates can reach up to 90%. Since there’s less noise compared to digital channels, response rates are five to nine times higher than other channels. 

But… typically, direct mail is expensive, time-consuming, and impersonal. A lot of higher ed shops use disparate systems and vendors to craft direct mail messaging, pull mailing lists, design mailings, proof mock-ups, and coordinate postage. 

And Pledgemine bridges the gap. Pledgemine delivers personalized direct mail that is scalable, high-impact, and ordered on-demand. They’re a one-stop-shop for direct mail (as in, they complete all aspects of a direct mail campaign on-site with data integrity top-of-mind). They’re a true tech partner for higher ed shops around the country, not just a third-party direct mail vendor.

After years of getting to know Todd and his team, we realized that while our product offerings are different, our missions aren’t. We’re all completely committed to bringing a more personalized experience to every donor: 

• To the 54.5% of managed constituents who received no 1:1 contact in the last year. (Source: EverTrue)
• To the 96% of constituents with $1MM or more in net worth who are unassigned.who have never received 1:1 outreach from a fundraiser before. (Source: EverTrue)
• To the 33% of $1k loyal annual fund donors who never received a “thank you” message after making their gift. (Source: EverTrue)
• And to the 25% of annual fund donors who receive no stewardship at all. (source: DRG annual report)

By joining the EverTrue family, Todd and the Pledgemine team bring the direct mail arm to our insights > outreach > engagement cycle. Through our merger with ThankView last year and our recent acquisition of Pledgemine, we’re tying together the best print on-demand personalization experience with the best video stewardship experience, and powering it with the analytics engine that orchestrates those touchpoints. The personalized outreach evokes donor responses, and those engagement insights flow back into EverTrue, attributing donors, dollars, and pipeline to the campaign and powering the next one.

In Todd’s words, “It’s about how we tell a story and build a rapport with donors over time. And we have to use these different outreach tools to our advantage, at the right time, at the right pace, and in the right voice, and our combined technologies are going to allow us to do that well for our customers.”