The Saint Louis Zoological Park has an advantage most other nonprofits don’t: beautiful pictures of adorable animals. Put one on a marketing piece and people take notice. The Zoo also has Director of Planned Gifts Steven Rosenblum, an innovator who knows how to make marketing meet his needs. Before Steven arrived in September 2005, the Zoo sent traditional newsletters three or four times a year. Steve decided it was time to mix things up and see if the Zoo could reach more people.

Using the same marketing budget, Steve worked with The Stelter Company to create colorful traditional postcards, postcards with tear-off reply cards, self-mailing newsletters and traditional newsletters, all of which prominently feature the beloved animals.

 

“I think different people will look at different things,” Steven says. “If you’re mailing 14,000 newsletters, half might say they don’t have time to read it. But if you’ve got a postcard with a great animal picture, they might take the time to look at it and then go to the Web site for more information.”

 

Steven’s collaboration with The Stelter Company worked. The Zoo found that by using a variety of marketing tools it was able to reach more people, and more people took notice.

 

The Zoo also made a concerted effort to promote the charitable IRA rollover opportunity and ordered several postcards, as well as articles relating to the legislation—again using animals to sell its story. That worked, too; the Zoo received more than 20 IRA gifts totaling approximately $700,000.

Besides the variety and timeliness of the marketing, it is the look of the Zoo’s marketing pieces that gets it noticed. Several years ago the Zoo changed its color scheme, logo and overall branding and wanted to ensure that the new look was reflected in all its marketing communications. “While the Stelter materials were always beautiful in what we requested before, we wanted to make sure that their materials echoed our internal guidelines,” Steven explains. “So we sent all of the information to the Stelter graphics people. Now everything is seamless.”

 

Steven, who often gives speeches on planned giving marketing to other nonprofits, says that other than tweaking a few minor things, he’s sticking with the planned giving program the Zoo has in place. “We’ve been so pleased with it,” he says.

 

With a lot of adorable animals and an array of attractive marketing materials, the Saint Louis Zoo has discovered that variety isn’t only nice, it’s also smart marketing.