Mal Warwick is a fundraising consultant who has authored several of the
most informative books in this admittedly niche field. He combines the scientific method with years of experience to produce effective and straightforward books on successful direct marketing for non-profit organizations. Mal Warwick’s Testing, Testing, 1,2,3 is 5 years old, but in my opinion it has not received enough attention in the field.
The 250 page book from 2003 is dedicated to the idea that direct mail fundraising can be improved through the use of what the author calls “direct mail tests.” Many organizations essentially guess at the best means of creating direct mail and do not perform evaluations of what has worked best in the past. Warwick advocates testing different types of mailings with statistically similar groups of people in order to determine what has the highest return on investment: “The theory behind direct mail
testing […] is that applying scientific principles will enable you to discover the perfect combination of ask, offer, package, and postage” (Page 17).
He spends thirteen chapters analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of this practice and lays out a compelling case to engage in direct mail testing. The disadvantages, he notes, center around the fact that people are not as rational and predictable as statisticians and economists would have us believe, and that sometimes a mailing making significantly more money than another can be a fluke.
That said, there is enough evidence to support adopting the practice in non-profit organizations. The rest of the book reviews the results of tests that the author’s
consulting company has run for several dozen different clients. This is invaluable information, as studies revealing this type of data are sparse at best.
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