Mail Manager Inc has been providing services to the Salvation Army Southern California Division since 2003. This division of Salvation Army covers 13 regional offices throughout Southern California.
Services over the years have included:
• Print and Mail of Quarterly Newsletters
• Laser Personalized Direct Mail Campaigns for Thank You letters to donors from all locations
• Personalized Direct Marketing campaigns for the office of Planned Giving
• Print and Direct Marketing Invitations for Special Events
“Doing The Most Good.” With those four words, the Salvation Army goes to battle every day to feed, to clothe, to comfort, and to care. They rebuild broken homes and broken lives through evangelism.
The Salvation Army operates 7,546 centers in communities across the United States. These include food distribution, disaster relief, rehabilitation centers, anti-human trafficking efforts, and a wealth of children’s programs.
Their work is largely funded through kettle donations, corporate contributions, and the sale of goods donated to Salvation Army Family Stores. Eighty-two cents of every dollar they receive is spent on their mission-focused programs.
The Salvation Army needed an experienced Direct Marketing vendor/partner who could manage the printing and mailing of Thank You Letters to all donors and contributors on a weekly basis.
The Southern California Division needed a way to thank donors and contributors who participated in their fundraising events. Letters needed to be personalized from the specific region that donor resides. This required segmenting the thank you letter to include the signature of the Colonel for each division, with specific reference to the campaign contributed to and or volunteer efforts.
To personalize and authenticate messaging, the challenge became to sort and segment contributors from one major data file AND print with personalized greetings from the specific Colonel and specific region location information. This required the integration of multiple unique return addresses and data elements.
All letters additionally required a reference to the specific campaign that the gift was given for, as well as a recap/verification of the amount of the donor monetary gift.
Mail Manager developed and wrote a highly sophisticated customized data program to empower The Salvation Army to parse out the specified data from each record and print all letters in a single pass. As a result, this expanded the scope of capabilities for all offices, allowing them to take and send files based on their own office-focused objectives. In addition, the program incorporated the limitations of software used by each office – without sacrificing their ability to maximize delivery and customization for messaging to each target addressee. By doing so, offices across the entire Salvation Army network experienced significant efficiencies and overall postal cost savings.
All thank yous went out once/week in direct mail, personalized message to each and every individual, referencing the amount of their contribution, event(s) they contributed and/or volunteered for, and all thank yous were digitally signed by the Colonel for The Salvation Army, Southern California District.
As a result, the Salvation Army of Southern California had a greater consistency in meeting its annual donor contribution goals.
A process that had formally been cumbersome and expensive to implement was streamlined and costs of processing were significantly reduced. In addition timeliness of response to donor gifts were increased as well. Because of this, the Salvation Army considers Mail Manager Inc. a strong partner, ready and able to take to the task of raising much-needed funding to meet their ongoing humanitarian services and assistance goals.