Why You Should Always Track Direct Mail Results
Let’s start with a word about Key Performance Indicators (KPI)…
To plan an effective direct mail campaign, it’s helpful to begin with the end in mind. In other words, what are your goals? Do you want to boost your revenue for the year, the quarter or a particular season? Do you have a secondary goal?
It’s natural to design a campaign to get more sales or to build awareness. If you get an increase in calls or sales within a few weeks of your mailing, you might think that your campaign was successful. But, without tracking the results, you’re only getting part of the story.
Read on and learn what tracking direct mail results will uncover and how to use the information to build more effective direct mail campaigns.
Effective Direct Mail and its Impact on Your KPI(s)
A vague goal can yield partial or incomplete results. Instead, be specific about what it is that you want from the campaign.
Here’s an example: if you are running a repeat of the “Happy New Year” campaign, and last year’s campaign yielded $12,000 for a particular product or service you can determine a new primary goal. If your main goal is to improve 25% over last year’s results, your primary KPI would be sales of $15,000.
The Benefit of Tracking Direct Mail KPI(s)
One of the benefits of tracking direct mail KPIs is each result can serve as a benchmark.
If you are promoting an introductory offer of full inspection and treatment of $150 for your pest control service, you can calculate the number of mailings that must be sent to achieve the goal.
With the average direct mail response rate for a house list at 9% and 5% for a prospect list, to make the $15,000 goal will take 100 new customers at the $150 introductory price. Using the 9% return, to achieve 100 new orders, you’ll need to reach 1,112 potential new customers. To help reach your goal, make sure you’ve written an irresistible offer.
Or you can also decide to raise your price to $175 to reach your goal, then send 957 mailers and get 86 new customers to buy.
The revenue benchmark allows you to make better business decisions and prepare appropriately.
Additional Outcomes of Effective Direct Mail Tracking
Gaining control of your revenue is just one of the life-changing outcomes of tracking your direct mail marketing. Here are a few that may be less obvious but can save time and provide additional views into your operations and opportunities to streamline to save time and money.
Establish Pinpoint Timing
Many businesses have a seasonal aspect to their business. Landscapers, handy persons who specialize in outdoor repairs have obvious busy times of the year. Effective direct mail campaigns can help customers and prospects find reasons to utilize your service outside of seasonal times.
When you track your mailing results consistently for all your campaigns, you can determine whether you’ve changed the seasonal timing of your business based on post-campaign sales. And, you can adjust your mail schedule to get the best results.
Staff Effectively
After a few campaigns, you should be able to accurately estimate the number of phone calls and visits you’ll receive as a result of your direct mail campaign tracking. This ensures that you won’t be severely understaffed.
Added Transparency
As you continue to run and track direct mail campaigns, some things will become clearer to you and your team – including how far ahead to prepare for a mailing, when to contact your mail house, and when the results will roll in post-mailing.
It’s not just your marketing and project management teams that are prepared to act in alignment with a mailing, but when your sales and customer service team are kept apprised of the campaigns, they’ll know when they should be ready for new sales, too.
You may be most surprised by how you become transparent to vendors. Good mail houses and printers may call you ahead of a mailing to see if you were planning to schedule your usual quarterly mailings – when you’ve tracked results and established mail schedules based on results.
Ready to Produce an Effective Direct Mail Marketing Campaign?
One Stop Mail’s experienced direct mail team can help you establish affordable and effective direct mail campaigns, from planning to deploying and tracking. Contact us or call 602.233.3003 to find out how we can help you.
