Spice Market (Mısır Çarşısı) Istanbul by flickr user exfordy

Not literally, obviously... unless you are using some sort of spice as a premium.  In that case, yes, literally spice up your mail!

But, what I’d like to talk about are various techniques you can use to make each mail package you send to your donors a little bit different so that they are getting new and fresh packages from you.  And hopefully this will mean that they get excited each time they hear from you, and hopefully respond often!

The most obvious ways to make each package different are to have different outer envelope, letter, and reply designs, premium package incentives (labels, cards, note pads...) and different stories.  If you’re doing this and it’s working, then great!

However, I’d like to dig a little bit deeper than those common ‘ingredients’.   Here are a few suggestions, or we can call them ‘spices’ to add to your DM spice rack, that might help to differentiate your appeals from your other appeals, and perhaps more importantly - from your competitor’s appeals. 

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