Non-Profit Benefits from Our Non-Tolerance of Mediocrity

An association that trains professionals who protect our water supply should be demanding, ruthless and unbending when it comes to quality. Talk about a dream client.

Situation

This organization takes its job seriously. Because when you're charged with ensuring that scientists, engineers and other professionals have the knowledge and training they need to keep our water supply and water environments safe, you have to. If it didn't, a public health disaster could easily have its name on it.

Direct mail is this organization's primary marketing channel to its 35,000 members. So it was no surprise that when it came to finding a partner to manage mailing hundreds of different types of messages and promotions (at 20,000-plus mailings each) to its membership, our client took a hard line with vendors. It meant bypassing candidates that didn't meet its standards. Or dropping those that initially promised exceptional service and then let its performance slide. Which is what this organization did, constantly going through one vendor after another. That is, until it met ProList.

Solution

What it found in us was the same uncompromising view on doing things the right way--a kindred spirit in exactitude and precision in the data management, merge-purge and fulfillment services we provide for the association. With a commitment to results and attention to detail that other mail houses laugh off as impossible, but have been met for this client day in and day out. Not just for a few weeks or months, but for the past 18 years to date.

It's no accident that the root of this relationship has been the consultative personal service provided by our staff. In fact, it's probably inaccurate to call it service. It's more like protective custody. Proactive troubleshooting. Maniacal obsession with even the smallest details. Call it what you want, but we call it the only way we operate.

Results

It's this uncompromising guardianship of our client's direct mail success that has guided our contact for this client to continually defuse potential issues before they became show-stoppers. Solve problems on the fly. Even tackle mistakes that were caused by other parties to help our client avoid costly reprinting. Whatever the reason, it's why our client's operations manager doesn't refer to Beverly, his Prolist contact, as "my vendor" or "my supplier." The term he uses? "My right-hand person."

Sure, our client receives competitive pricing. And of course, it has benefited from cost-saving tips we've passed on, as well as from our willingness to work out solutions that other mail houses would dismiss. But what is it that has truly sustained this long-time partnership? The warm fuzzies that both we and our client feel from being merciless drill sergeants on quality.