Merkle (www.merkle.com), the nation's fastest growing customer relationship marketing (CRM) agency, announced its recent win of a Gold Marketing Award for Excellence and Innovation (MAXI) from the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW) for its work with Feeding America. The MAXI awards recognize the best talent and work in the direct marketing and response industry. The presentation ceremony was held Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at the Gaylord National Hotel & Conference Center in National Harbor, Md.

Merkle earned the honor in recognition of its breakthrough direct mail campaign for Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, which supplies food to more than 37 million Americans each year. With a long-standing acquisition program that was showing signs of fatigue, the organization had set aggressive goals to not only improve donor acquisition rates, but also to maintain or exceed the average gift. Previous campaigns had asked donors how they might choose which bills to pay in order to feed their families; Merkle designed and implemented a new program that asked donors how they would choose which child to feed if there weren’t enough to go around. By changing the story to a more powerful, emotional appeal, the program achieved a 64% average lift across response metrics, without sacrificing average gift amount. The result was an overall revenue increase exceeding 65%.

Merkle’s history of partnering with nonprofits to further important causes dates back 20 years. The company has been working with Feeding America for about ten years as agency of record, providing consulting and creative services for data and analytics, direct mail and alternative media, across all direct response programs.

“Merkle is deeply honored not only to work with such an altruistic and meaningful organization as Feeding America, but also to be recognized by the industry for our dedication to helping them succeed,” said Angie Moore, senior vice president and general manager for Merkle’s nonprofit practice. “We look forward to our continued partnership with Feeding America, and to helping them continue to improve their fundraising programs and advance their worthy cause.”