In the planned giving community, there is considerable controversy about how much time (and money) should be spent “marketing” to financial advisors. When working with our clients, we often ask about strategies they have found to be effective when working with and marketing to advisors. Here are a few simple guidelines we have developed to help ensure that investing time with advisors produces the desired results:
PG Calc announces a new photo contest for all of our friends and customers - Where's Zombie? The object of the contest is to submit photos of PG Calc zombies in unusual and fun places. You can get your PG Calc zombies by visiting us at any of the planned giving conferences we will be attending during the year. You can see our conference schedule here. Send entries to info@pgcalc.com or tweet @PGCalc #huntingforpgcalcbrains. Entries will be judged on creativity, and the winner will receive a year of free Planned Giving Manager (PGM) service and support - a $695 value! If you're using our Marketing Services and are already getting free PGM, we'll take another $695 off your Marketing Services fee! To see the contest rules and current entries, go to the zombie page on our website. Good luck!
We talk about target marketing, about segmenting a list so that you can create messaging that is specific to each segment of your audience. Unfortunately, gift planners rarely segment their lists. This is partially because planned giving mailings tend to be small in comparison to broader appeals, such as for annual gifts. Further, segmentation is not only more time-consuming for the person involved, but also can be more costly. So, what to do?
The Trump administration has announced a tax plan for Congressional consideration. The plan features reduction of personal and corporate income tax rates including taxes on pass-through business entities such as S corporations, compression of the number of tax brackets from seven to three and an increase in the standard deduction. Personal income tax rates are reduced to 10%, 25%, and 35% brackets. This proposal eliminates the deduction for state and local income taxes but the income tax charitable deduction remains.
Sometimes an idea is so good, it’s worth reminding our readers. A few weeks ago, Greg Warner of MarketSmart published a blog post related to internal telemarketing programs. For those of you who didn’t read it, the post is short and worth your time. For those of you who did read it, did you add this to your list of marketing ideas?
