Finalist: One to One Gulfcoast

Finalist: One to One Gulfcoast

By David Wexler

Associated Editor

Many not-for-profits have an important message to deliver. Unfortunately, more times than not, direct mailings to prospects end up unopened in the bottom of the garbage can next to other generic mail labeled, "You may already be a winner" and "Don't throw this away."

In fact, only .5% of all of direct mail generates response, according to Brian Weiner and Dana Place, founders of One to One Gulfcoast.

Weiner and Place set out to change that three years ago when they launched One to One, a variable data marketing company. The company provides customized, full-color printed mailings targeted to individual prospects - all mailed first-class.

"If we do our job perfectly," Place says, "the recipient of this package thinks the letter is written to them."

Both Weiner and Place were familiar with the printing industry prior to launching One to One in 2002. The two ran Noalart Graphics, a successful multimillion dollar digital printing business in Marlborough, Mass. They sold it in 2000.

A few years later, Weiner was enjoying his retirement one afternoon in his New England home. He had the New York Times at his side and a bowl of chowder in front of him when his wife sat her man down.

"She said 'Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but I married you for better and for worse, I didn't marry you for lunch. You need to get the hell out of here,'" says Weiner, now 51. "She felt I was too young to be retired."

So Weiner said farewell to his retirement days and left New England with his family and headed for Venice, where he and Place started One to One.

Weiner and Place chose the Gulf Coast not only for the sunshine, but also because of its enormous not-for-profit community, its concentration on the arts and general affluence.

"We wanted to be in a place where we could overlay our creativity, add value to that print product and do something at the same time that was socially and personally rewarding," Weiner says. "What moved us in this direction is that we saw this variable data technology that was available in the marketplace, we knew the print engines, but nobody was willing to take the ride on the leading-edge of technology and attempt to integrate it in a creative manner."

One to One offers a full slate of services - writing, design, printing, mailing and data management - all wrapped into one package. They do not provide these services on an individual basis. All the printing is done in-house using sophisticated software driven by data provided by the client.

Weiner and Place stress that One to One is different than a print shop.

Place, 56, says they are targeting non-profits seeking to "raise more money and mine more data for their constituents than they have been able to do in the past."

The response rate has been tremendous - on average, about 8% of recipients respond to their clients with donations, Weiner says. On average, One to One increases year-over-year giving rates by 45% for its clients.

In the old days, Weiner and Place say, not-for-profits would simply ink jet names on letters, mail them with bulk rate postage to their prospects and hope for a 1 to 2% response rate.

The company can use up to 100 variants in one piece of text. For example, in the Out-of-Door Academy's Annual Fund Campaign, ODA personalized the letter to various groups: Parents of the school's lower campus students; parents of upper campus students; parents with children at both campuses; parents who donated last year; new families; and people who aren't involved in the school directly.

"Our goal," Weiner says, "is to make it feel like it fits their family."

Tech Time

Brian Weiner isn't afraid of new technology. Quite the opposite. The co-founder of a company devoted to using technology to make it easier for non-profits to solicit donations, loves it.

"I like the fact that technology in general changes so fast that it's hard to be bored," he says. "The beautiful thing about technology today is I can wake up tomorrow and see something that I didn't see yesterday. To be able to expend my mind by testing new technologies is very invigorating."

And I buy every toy that's made. I've already got an iPod Nano. I've redone my whole house in Apple because I've become so addicted to it in the past six months. I wirelessly beam music throughout my house."