The Multiple Ways Branded Merch Levels Up Giving Days

  • by Michael Wolaver, Founder/Captain of Magellan Promotions

Giving Day Branded Merch Strategies

Giving Days have become superbowl moments for advancement offices, and for good reason. When done well, they achieve a wide range of goals in one impactful day by:

  • Encompassing a broad donor base
  • Engaging current students and planting early seeds of philanthropy
  • Rallying the entire campus, including faculty and staff, to get involved
  • Fueling support for the university’s greatest needs

Planning a successful Giving Day takes a lot of work and includes a number of important touchpoints and messaging. However through our experience, we often don’t see colleges take full advantage of the power of branded merch in their Giving Days.  

Branded merch is a unique marketing tool because it is the only form of marketing that people truly get excited about receiving. In addition, it rewards, creates awareness and is long lasting. Perfect attributes for a successful Giving Day!  

Through our experience, there are four key points in planning a Giving Day where branded merch should be incorporated.    

1. Make the Day Known

If donors don’t know Giving Day is happening, they can’t participate. While email and social media are necessary, branded merch integrated into direct mail stands out and creates engagement and excitement. University of Hartford did this strategy and experienced record breaking results.

2. Equip Your Ambassadors

Having a coordinated ambassador strategy can result in incredible results. Whether these ambassadors are alumni, students, parents, or staff, equipping them with a sought-after branded merch ambassador kit is a must. The key is to keep ambassadors motivated to hit their fundraising goals. And when one of their carrots is an exclusive kit, the results will speak for themselves.   

3. Incentivize Donations

The most popular area to incorporate merch is to have merch motivate giving. In fact, our research shows that donors are 53% more likely to donate if offered a promotional product for a donation. 

Level this up with a few strategies:

  • Offer a limited-edition product that features artwork that has emotional connections with donors (like University of Richmond did with these socks).

  • Tier branded merch offerings, having ranges of products that are received for higher amounts donated.

  • Give donors choice of their merch, thus increasing the likelihood of their excitement to receive the product.

4. Elevate The Thank You Mailer 

The donor appreciation letter at the end of the campaign is another opportunity to leave a lasting impression on this highly engaged audience. Remember, this is the audience that just donated and the goal is to encourage continued giving into the future. So take advantage of the wide variety of merch to create engaging and long-lasting moments. Examples include stickers with the campaign theme or a seed paper postcard (read how Cornell University used this product to tie into their theme).

Don’t Let Your Giving Day Miss Its Moment

Branded merch is a natural way to maximize the impact of Giving Day. But to take the most advantage, it takes a well thought out strategy. 

As always, we are happy to use our unique expertise to help think through ideas to ensure your Giving Day is successful.

Let’s chat about how to make your next Giving Day not just successful, but record breaking.

 

Giving Day Branded Merch Strategies

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Variable Data Best Practices

  • At the quoting stage of your project, please let us know how many fields of variable data your piece will have as this can affect pricing.
  • Data should be provided to us as an Excel spreadsheet with only the applicable data included.
  • Verbiage for variable data fields on artwork file should match up exactly with data fields on spreadsheet.
  • Spacing on artwork must allow for longest data entries. We recommend that your designer tests this in advance to confirm that the fields in the design can fit your longest pieces of data.

Postage Permits

We are happy to mail using a client’s USPS non-profit number. Here are a few best practices for this to go smoothly. Let our team know up front on the project so we can make sure to get the information we need right away. 

While our mail house does prefer to use their permit number for the mailing, we can use the client’s permit, If using their permit number, ensure there is enough postage to cover the mailing.

The information we need to in order to use a client’s nonprofit number includes the following:

  • CRID (customer registration ID)
  • Non-Profit Authorization Number (with USPS, not their nonprofit number for the university)
  • Non-profit indicia
  • Return address that is on file with USPS for the non-profit authorization number
  • Permit number

Formatting the Mailing List

Our account team will advise on specific requirements for your project’s mailing list.  We generally recommend these best practices to format the mailing list:
  • Send your data in a spreadsheet, saving it in the comma-separated values (CSV) format
  • International addresses must be separated from domestic addresses
  • Domestic addresses should at least contain data fields for “first name”, “last name”, “address 1”, “address 2”, “city”, “state” and “ZIP code”