National Wildlife Federation has signed a two-contract with DirectMail.com to provide mail shop, laser personalization, inventory management and testing services related to the non-profit’s renewals program. The printing of the materials is being bid out to different printers. Previously, the conservation organization placed printing and mail shop responsibilities with one vendor. “Now that we’ve split up the work, we’re seeing some savings because we’re really optimizing the strength of our production team to get the best possible pricing from print vendors,” said Martina White, director of marketing, membership acquisition and renewals at National Wildlife Federation. Having an ongoing contractual relationship for the mail shop work makes sense, however, because of the complexity of the program, White continued. National Wildlife Federation has approximately 1 million active members. Each month, it sends out 500,000 renewals mailings divided among 10 distinct packages. Within each group, there is also testing that takes place and laser variations based on each recipient’s donor level. Typically, the conservation organization purchases the necessary printed material required for a six month period and delivers it to DirectMail.com. However, DirectMail.com is also one of the bidding printers and has so for ended up doing a lot of the printing for the renewals program. “This is because DirectMail.com was the lowest priced bidder and because there is no freight requirement,” said White. DirectMail.com also ended up helping National Wildlife Federation recently produce a special appeal prompted by the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “This was an urgent issue that we haven’t fundraised around here typically,” said White, explaining the non-profit usually focuses on long-term issues such as protecting habitat and fighting global warming. “With the oil spill, we need donors’ money now to put to work in the gulf tomorrow,” she said. With the urgency of the issue in mind, National Wildlife Federation contacted two vendors to inquire about direct mail formats that could be turned around quickly. DirectMail.com returned a lower cost bid with the fastest turn around. National Wildlife Federation provided the copy and the creative and DirectMail.com got a direct mail package out the door in five days that consisted of a no. 10 envelope with a personalized 14-inch drop cut reply. A 14-inch drop cut reply is one sheet of paper for which the top three inches is set aside as the reply. This enables the letter and reply to be personalized at the same time. When the sheet goes through the bindery, the top is cut off so the reply is loose and the letter is folded.