It’s that time of year again – the annual eNonprofit Benchmark study, authored by M+R and NTEN, will soon be released. The full report will be released at the NTEN Conference on April 5, but here is a teaser infographic released today. Print it out, tack it to your wall, let the pretty colors soothe you…

March 6, 2012

Washington, DC — Avalon Consulting Group founders, President Allison Porter and Board Chair Ann Herzog, are pleased to announce the agency is celebrating its 15^th anniversary this year.

“Ann and I had a vision for a progressive agency that would push the boundaries of what direct marketing could be,” said Allison Porter. “I’m thrilled with where Avalon is 15 years later –always innovating to help our progressive nonprofit and political clients raise millions of dollars to achieve their goals for a better world.”

At this year's Direct Marketing Association Washington nonprofit conference in Washington, DC, Avalon President Allison Porter led a conference session entitled “8 Things Big Nonprofits Don’t Know That Smaller Nonprofits Understand,” which included presentations from several Avalon clients.

As VP of Analytics at Avalon, I always attend industry conferences with an eye out for new ways to use data more effectively. This year’s Direct Marketing Association Washington Nonprofit conference in Washington didn’t disappoint. A couple of data strategies particularly caught my interest:

• Target Analytics has a new product for targeting philanthropic web users with web ads. Something I’ll definitely look into, as we’re always looking for innovative ways to help our clients use data to cut donor prospecting costs, while maximizing the number of new donors acquired.

Avalon has run a number of successful tests in our marketing efforts recently, so I’d like to share a few of our best results:

• In an acquisition program for an environmental advocacy client, we created a new control package by borrowing from a successful online appeal to update our existing control. We designed a new, visually compelling carrier and a new lead for the letter that referenced the envelope photo. We saw a 27% lift in response and a huge increase in net per thousand – a terrific reminder that a fresh, winning prospecting package may be hiding among your non-acquisition materials…