Businesses can’t afford to engage in activities that aren’t producing results. But when it comes to your direct mail marketing efforts, how do you know if what you are doing is paying off?
What criteria are you using to measure the success of your direct mail efforts? How do you know if your mailing is paying off? What we ultimately want are customers and orders. But not every marketing effort results in an instant sale. There are other things we should also consider when evaluating direct mailing performance. Let’s look at some other criteria.
Website Visits
It’s likely you want to direct mail recipients to your website. It’s a great place to deliver detailed information. Respondents can select the information they want once they hit your website—allowing fast access to the information ’s important to them. If your mailing results in increased website visits, you’ll want to know. A good way to track visits is creating specific landing pages for each mailing. This allows you know for sure that a visitor came as a result of a specific mailing.
Requests for Additional Information
Of course you don’t just want to reach people—you want to engage them. One way to do that is offering a free downloadable e-book or special report. When a prospect asks for this information, they are indicating higher interest. These prospects are qualified leads—something else you want to track. These leads haven’t spent money with you, but there is a good likelihood for that. You’ll want to stay in touch.
Non-respondents
Measuring non-respondents may sound like an odd metric for success, but it’s important to know who NOT to mail to. If you have certain names on your mailing list that continually don’t respond it’s a signal you shouldn’t continue mailing to them. Not responding once isn’t a big deal, but someone repeatedly choosing not to respond may not be worth the time and money spent pursuing them.
Orders
Naturally, you’ll want to keep track of orders or transactions. You’ll also want to track amount and frequency. This helps when trying to figure the cost of a sale, and you’ll be better equipped to preparing an accurate budget. Again, it’s important to track the sale back to a specific mailing to evaluate its success.
