One of the strongest communication tools within 'Donor Management' that can help you reach your audience is 'Direct Mail'. These communications allow you to send physical letters to your donors and community.

Direct mailings can be used for various reasons, such as sending physical newsletters or appeals to less tech-savvy contacts or sending year-end tax-related documents for a donor's records.

Similarly to their 'Email Blast' counterpart, 'Direct Mail' can be customized to include images or other organization-specific features (such as a letterhead.)

From your 'Donor Management' Dashboard, click 'Communication' on the left navigation menu and select 'Direct Mail' from the drop-down list.

You will be directed to the 'Direct Mail' page - click the 'Add Direct Mail' button in the upper right corner of your screen.

Follow the instructions to move through the 'Create a Direct Mail' onboarder.

Finally, review your mailing before generating your labels (if you selected them in Step 3) and letters. You can view your drafted communication on the left side of the page or click the 'Download Preview' button to ensure everything appears correctly and edit if need be!

If you are satisfied with your mailing, click the 'Generate [VALUE] & [VALUE] Labels' button!

Note: If you are not using mailing labels, the button will read, 'Generate [VALUE] Letters'.

Your mailing will now reflect as 'Processing' on the 'Direct Mail' page.

An e-mail notification will automatically be sent to you once your mailing is ready to download.

When you log back into 'Donor Management', you can download a .pdf file of your mailing from the 'Direct Mail' page that you can print and send out!

If you opt to import a Word document for a direct mailing, you'll automatically jump from the "Type" step of this process to the "Recipients" step.

The process for this step will look very similar - but once you click the "Next" button, you'll see an option to upload the document of your choice for your mailing. You'll be able to select that document by clicking the "browse" button, and selecting the correct file from your device.

Your file must be in a Word-compatible format, such as .DOCX. Please be sure to convert your file to a .DOCX if you're having issues uploading the document correctly.

You'll also see a list of available "merge fields" you can include within your Word document, to make sure that each letter is personalized to its recipient.

For more information about adding merge fields to a Word Document, check out this short video guide below.