Quadriga Art | Quadriga Art Presents Strike up the Brand | Quadriga Art

Part 3 in the series, by Quadriga Art

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Your brand can be one of your greatest assets… but it probably isn’t.

Why not? Well, have you defined your brand for your supporters? Do you strengthen your brand with actions that resonate with your stakeholders? Do you utilize your brand’s good-will as much as you should? How do you use your brand to drive growth?

If you’re like most non-profits, you just had a tough time answering those questions. And your mission suffers because of it.

The concept of a “Brand” is huge for all businesses. But it’s even more important in non-profit direct mail marketing because your current and potential donors open their mailboxes to find hundreds-upon-hundreds of solicitations every year from organizations like yours – groups that have done very little to distinguish themselves from each other.

So let me ask you this: What makes you so hot?

A well-conceived brand strategy must highlight what makes you different, better, more effective -- unique. That strategy will result in more donations, volunteers, press, employees… and ultimately, will strengthen the mission.

What shouldn’t your brand strategy be?

Well, in consumer marketing there’s a term called “selling the category.”

Lets say you’re a cancer research group. You send an appeal that basically sells the idea of curing cancer, saving lives, easing pain. In that appeal, you’re convincing people only of the need to fund research, but not your specific “brand” of research. Unless you’re the market-share leader, selling the category benefits the competition as much (or more) than it benefits you.

You must go well-beyond convincing people of the general importance of a cause. You must differentiate your organization to position it as the solution. However noble “selling the category” may be, this doesn’t help your organization build “market share” or brand equity.

Without representing some sort of a contrast, your brand will just blend into the pack. And you’ll be leaving a lot of dollars in the mailbox.

The Quadiga Art goal is to partner with you to “personalize” the brand. To offer both the collective identity and the unique reason to believe. To strike on an emotional level with your donors – the people who will become your evangelists.

Next in our Quadriga Art Presents series:
Strengthening the Brand

Quadriga Art | Quadriga Art | Learn More about Our Global Locations

Quadriga Art International has been mailing high-velocity and performance-based direct mail internationally for over a decade. We serve direct mailers in countries around the world with our special blend of high quality manufacturing, innovative product development and creative and strategic support.

With tactically located manufacturing facilities around the world, we’re able to reduce production costs for our clients. Our complete integration and large production volumes give our clients access to the best possible packages, at the lowest possible prices.

From creative package design input to mailing strategy, project planning and execution, we keep our clients’ campaign results at the top of the industry.

We’re committed to thinking big and making a difference. From direct mail packages with three-dimensional premiums to world-class oil paintings, top quality stationery products sold at major retailers in the US and abroad, Quadriga Art International is there for our clients to provide a range of services as diverse as our product offering. Even though we’re a wide-ranging company, our culture is singular and consistent: We strive for excellence. We work hard. We believe in the power of imagination.

The Quadriga Art vision reflects the competitive, digital and global environment organizations face. In an age of unprecedented media diversification, direct mail remains one of the most potent ways to drive revenue. At Quadriga, we produce innovative
direct mail packages that get noticed, get opened and get results.

Organizations that rely on direct marketing for revenue or leads look to Quadriga Art to deliver expert design knowledge, turn-key in-house production and complete logistics. Quadriga takes mailing concepts from the drawing board to the mailbox, seamlessly with zero outsourcing.

When you reach out to prospects, you have three seconds before they decide to open or toss your mailing. Quadriga Art packages are known worldwide for producing breakthrough response rates that result in lower acquisition costs. Nonprofits and commercial organizations alike spend less on postage, lists and data by generating responses from qualified prospects at the highest possible response rates.

For efficient long-term stewardship of donor and customer relationships, Quadriga offers a full range of premium and non-premium mailing capabilities. We design packages with high levels of personalization, interactive bouncebacks, mission-oriented premiums, turn-key back-end offers and unique print treatments that increase the tangibility of your message.

Need tips and information about direct marketing? The Quadriga Art Thought Leadership series of articles reveals more about our vision and services. We are sure you will find them useful when choosing a marketing fundraising partner. Quadriga Art is led by Mark Schulhof, and is a place where various creative services are realized and valued on a global platform. They work with people from more than 25 different countries, making them one of the leading companies providing creative management and direct marketing services that work for the benefit of clients as well as the donors.

For more about Quadriga Art US and download a free whitepaper, click here.

Quadriga Art | Quadriga Art Presents | The State of Donations

Quadriga Art - Part One - The State of Donations


Quadriga Art presents a look at the overall health of the non-profit industry. How do you stack-up against these numbers?

1. Less than 40% of donors will give more than one gift. Furthermore, the “Fundraising Effectiveness Project” indicates that cumulative bad-to-poor growth-in-giving fundraising performance in 2010 was 84%.

2. Recurring Gift Donors only accounted for 10% of all US Donors.

This comes from the donorCentrics “U.S. Recurring Giving Benchmarking Analysis” study. Organizations are missing out on stable, predictable, and highly profitable fundraising revenue. Remember – the biggest predictor of repeat giving is donation recency. Recurring donors are your most valuable.

3. Fundraising Email Response Rate is 0.13%
This comes from the eNonprofit “Benchmarks Study.” That means more than 99.5% of fundraising emails don't yield a donation.

4. Only 26% of Nonprofits Rated their Websites Very Effective
The State of the Nonprofit Industry Survey tells us that 74% of nonprofit websites aren't doing their job. And Facebook is even LESS effective.

Those numbers are unacceptable. And we do everything possible so that our clients don’t ever experience them. Fundraising best practices mandate the following:

Research, test, analyze. Touch, move, inspire. Thank, welcome, invite.

Too many non-profits communicate in a way that asks people to think.

But reason won’t move someone to join support your cause. Logic won’t convince someone to become an evangelist for your group. Analysis won’t sway someone to open his or her wallet and hand out money. However, emotion will … You’re not selling the importance of family – you’re selling a sense of belonging. You’re not selling the importance of reducing crime – you’re selling peace of mind. You’re not selling the importance of working to elect like-minded, like-valued candidates – you’re selling heroism.

Ask yourself this: Does your direct mail move people… make them feel something… compel them to give?
What does your heart tell you?

Next in the Quadriga Art Presents series: You’ve got (direct) mail.

Quadriga Art | About Quadriga Art | Quadriga Art Thought Leadership

Quadriga Art Thought Leadership - What is the Overhead Myth and why we need to stop it.
In a historic move, the leaders of the country’s three leading sources of information on nonprofits – GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance – penned an open letter to the donors of America denouncing the “overhead ratio” as a valid indicator of nonprofit performance.
The letter, signed by all three organization’s CEOs, marks the beginning of a campaign to correct the common misconception that the percentage of charity’s expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs—commonly referred to as “overhead”—is, on its own, an appropriate metric to evaluate when assessing a charity’s worthiness and efficiency. The nonprofit sector, which all three organizations provide information to and about, has too often erroneously focused on overhead over the past few decades, which has starved nonprofits from investing in themselves as enterprises and created what the Stanford Social Innovation Review calls, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle.”>br> We need your help in eradicating the Overhead Myth once and for all. In doing so, we will help to ensure that nonprofits have the resources to invest their own sustainability and success! Visit overheadmyth.com.
Other news and opinion:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-berger/the-overhead-myth_b_3467895.html http://trust.guidestar.org/2013/06/17/launching-a-campaign-to-end-the-overhead-myth/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trevor-neilson/dan-pallotta-won-the-worl_b_3456660.html
Visit Quadriga Art Thought Leadership Blog - Over 70 Years Direct Non Profit Marketing Experience
Quadriga Art is a global leader in direct marketing and creative services. Led by CEO Mark Schulhof, we offer nonprofit organizations, fundraising agencies and commercial brands innovative direct marketing campaign solutions that produce extraordinary results. For more than seventy years, Quadriga Art has helped value-driven clients raise money and create connections. At the core of our company’s values is a focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and a deep and abiding sense of responsibility to the clients and communities we serve.
The breadth of Quadriga Art’s services and work spans 25 countries worldwide. Over a billion of our direct marketing packages reach targeted prospects, donors and consumer markets annually. Quadriga Art is built from the ground up to serve organizations that demand low-cost, high-impact campaign solutions.
Please visit our Thought Leadership information at our blog: http://www.quadrigaart.com/blog

Mark Schulhof and Quadriga Art Employees Participate in March of Dimes March for Babies Walk

Every Baby Deserves a Healthy Start to Life…..Mark Schulhof Encourages Employees to take the “First Steps” to Help!

As a leader in the direct marketing industry, Quadriga Art, with leader Mark Schulhof, CEO, has a shared passion and commitment for helping those in need worldwide. Reaching out to communities in which they live and work, volunteering time and efforts and investing in programs that improve the lives of individuals has become a core mission for Mr Schulhof and his team.

Participating in the Company-wide March of Dimes March for Babies Walk connects employees in many ways: to the mission as a Company, to each of us who was provided the blessing of life and to our own employee, Lauren Veri, who has shared her story with us below.

What makes a difference in a child's life to you? Is it having attentive parents, a great teacher or mentor, a loving and encouraging home environment or is it something different? Whatever it is, what happens before answering this question is the blessing of having a baby born as close to term and, most importantly, healthy.

Unfortunately, not every baby starts with a healthy life. But, by supporting a cause, Quadriga Staff will help make the difference by getting involved in the Company-wide March of Dimes March for Babies Walk.

Location information is as follows: April 20 Lynchburg, VA April 28 Baltimore, MD April 28 Manhattan April 28 Voorhees, NJ May 4 Akron, OH May 4 Louisville, KY May 4 W. Burlington, IA May 19 Manchester, NH

A Quadriga Employees' Story:

Our baby girl entered the world 4 weeks early due to complications of preeclampsia and toxemia. Though she was a preemie, due to my gestational diabetes she was 7 pounds 15 oz. On the outside she looked perfectly healthy, but it was clear a few minutes after she was born that she was having trouble breathing. She was quickly taken to the NICU without my husband or I getting a chance to really see or hold her. As it turns out, she had RDS, Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Basically, her lungs were so premature that she wasn't able to maintain healthy levels of oxygen for her little body, and every breath was a struggle.

After two days at the hospital she was born at, Audriana was transferred down to Rainbow Babies and Children's hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, to a higher level NICU. At this point she was put on a ventilator and also was given a feeding tube. My husband and I had not even held our little girl, and we didn't get the chance until she was five days old. It was such a difficult time, but the NICU staff played such a role in making our time there more bearable The organization, March of Dimes, worked hand in hand with the staff at Rainbows to provide us with information, patient advocacy, and all around support for our family while we were there. There was even materials and a bag for my step daughter who is ten. This helped her understand what was happening with her baby sister, and gave her some comfort in a situation that no ten year old truly knows how to handle. The organization also helped to support lunches for the NICU parents, information sessions such as infant massage, and even scrapbook sessions for the moms to make memory books for our little ones.

I am happy to say that she is now a happy and energetic 5 month old who is doing great! Her lung issues have resolved and though she is still tiny for her age, she is growing right on target and hitting all of her milestones! Our stay at the NICU was for 15 days total. Though it was a difficult time for our family, March of Dimes truly played a vital role in getting us the information that we needed to understand what was going on around us and helped make our stay at the hospital a better one. We are so grateful for them and thank everyone for any support they can give such a wonderful organization!

Account Manager, International Data Management

Mark Schulhof - Quadriga Art Thought Leadership: Predictive Analytics Can Increase ROI

Imagine the flawless direct marketing campaign: a perfectly crafted appeal reaching the targeted ideal donor, through a medium and with a message so suited to their personality and giving preferences that they not only respond, but with a larger gift than their previous one. Now imagine this scenario played out with every name on your mailing list.

It’s fundraising marketing nirvana, and not likely to happen due to the shifting whims of human nature and the circumstances of life that can alter a donor’s behavior between the time a campaign piece leaves your hands and arrives in theirs.

However, at Quadriga Art LLC, we tackle every customer campaign with this goal in mind, and we utilize a sophisticated tool that helps us get as close to as possible to the ideal ROI: predictive analytics.

With computer models and processes that break down the past and predictive giving details of every donor, the Quadriga Art team and its partners can optimize every piece of our customers’ direct mail. Consider some of the details analytics can provide:

• Knowing who to contact, through which channel, at what time, and with the optimal frequency for the greatest return on the marketing spend.

• Ranking of each person in the customer database according to his or her likelihood to make an annual, planned or major gift, become a member or upgrade their giving. We can sort individuals into relevant market segments, help our clients understand the marketing vehicle and message that is most likely to appeal to each prospect, and identify prospects of wealth. This knowledge provides insight to further target the marketing message, including ask amount, and achieve a higher return on marketing dollars by focusing efforts where they are most likely to be fruitful.

• Identifying groups of individuals that share certain characteristics and will respond to a similar message. Once we identify these market segments, we can craft studies that test different messages, vehicles and times of year to contact these donors until we find the combination that brings in the greatest return.

Quadriga Art excels at high performance fundraising. Predictive analytics is a powerful tool we use to leverage increased revenue and profit for our customers. This mechanism also provides an avenue for helping our clients cut their marketing expenses. By filtering out high-risk prospects, organizations can spend less and improve their ROI. Smart marketing also helps retain donors, reducing the costs associated with acquiring new ones.

With more than 70 years experience in direct marketing for nonprofits and a team of more than 2,500 experts around the globe, Quadriga Art’s culture is founded upon the application of innovative thinking to every facet of direct marketing. Our employment of predictive analytics assures our clients of the most optimum response to their campaign and highest return for their marketing dollars.

Mark Schulhof and Quadriga Staff Release New Whitepaper

Quadriga Art has released a new free whitepaper entitled "The Past is the Past: Propel Your Marketing Strategies into the Future" available here for a limited time: http://www.quadrigaart.com/white-paper-post

If your nonprofit direct marketing strategy revolves around primarily direct mail, and repurposing the same campaign message that you’ve used for years, it’s likely time for a fresh assessment. Seventies rock band Jethro Tull might have scored it big when it created a hit with the lyrics, “Oh, we won’t give in, we’ll keep living in the past,” but if that’s your mantra when it comes to direct mail, be prepared for results that don’t even make it on the charts. While a few ideas from past decades are being resurrected with a 2013 twist, many are simply too archaic for today’s financially savvy and technology-driven donors.

In this paper, we’ll review a few outdated direct marketing ideas, thoughts and strategies to help you identify those you might be hanging onto out of nostalgia or habit regarding the use of direct mail and the lack of use of other marketing channels. We’ll also suggest some practices that are old but now new again – ideas that are reborn with a modern twist and multi-channel approaches. Finally, we’ll offer some “must have” strategies for meeting the needs of modern donors and achieving your fundraising goals.

Enjoy, and be sure to share with friends and colleagues. Available for a limited time only.