Culture and Leadership
Wondering how you can measure direct mail marketing success?
With the advent of social media, email, and search engine optimizationiSearch engine optimization, or SEO, is the act of loading a website with important keywords to increase visibility and ensure the site will be found by search engines when an internet user is searching for a product or company. For example, if Bob's Pizza Shop doesn't have the words "delivery" "brick-oven" and "fresh" repeated throughout their web site, someone searching t... Read More, it’s easy to overlook some traditional marketing channels that helped businesses reach out to their audience in the past. Of course, we talk particularly of direct mail marketing, which remains valuable if you want to cover all your bases.
But, how do you know if your direct mail marketing yields positive results? More importantly, how is its success determined?
What is the Most Common Way to Measure Direct Mail Marketing Results?
Almost every type of business today can benefit from direct mail marketingiDirect mail marketing is the act of using the postal service to deliver promotional marketing material direct to a customer based on demographic information such as age, location or income. Direct mail pieces can include postcards, catalogs and other promotional pieces enables one-on-one communication with your audience, so you can control who receives the message and when... Read More. You can use it to make announcements, whether you’re opening a new shop, launching new products, or running a sale. It’s a great and effective way to get your message out there, potentially increase sales and raise brand awareness to boot.
The response rate is by far the most common way to measure direct mail marketing efforts. A good response rate can vary greatly according to your business as well as your sales and marketing objectives. You may see the average response rate across all types of direct mailers is around 2%, with higher rates being from retention campaigns, but acquisition campaigns can be anywhere from 0.5-1%, which is acceptable, not to mention realistic. But for high investment, one-time purchase campaigns, even a .2-.3 percent rate is considered a success.
It goes to show that you should not only measure the success of your direct mail campaigns by their response rate but it can also be determined by other factors such as your marketing goals, quality of responses, and ROIiReturn on investment (ROI) is simply the measure of what was spent on a marketing campaign compared to the sales that were a result of that marketing campaign. More simply put, for every dollar a company spends on marketing, how much money is that effort generating in sales. On a larger scale, ROI is a key metric used to not only determine success of markteing efforts, but... Read More, to name a few.
Direct Mail Marketing by the Numbers
Direct mail marketing works by itself, yet you can use it to complement your other strategies when necessary. Below are some statistics proving that direct mail still gets positive responses.
- In the US, 4 out of 10 Americans of all ages check their mail every day.
- About 42 percent of mail recipients go through the mail they receive—either by reading or scanning them.
- Advertising mails have a lifespan of 17 days, whereas emails only have a few seconds before they get deleted.
- Direct mail also wins by a long shot against emails in terms of open rate. Whereas 90% of direct mail gets opened, only 20-30 percent of emails receive the same treatment.
- The response rate for direct mail is also high at up to 9x higher than that of email.
In addition to higher open rates and response rates, direct mail also leaves a better impression on recipients—about 75 percent of consumers can recall a brand immediately after receiving direct mail compared to just 44 percent of people who see a digital ad. Moreover, while direct mail’s cost-per-acquisition is nearly double that of email, its return on investment is impressively strong at 29 percent. It nearly matches that of social media marketing which yields a 30 percent ROI.
Judging by these numbers, direct mail remains a sound marketing investment. Sure, sending emails every day may sound easier, but keep in mind that it’s also easy for your audience to ignore them. It’s contrary to postal mail that’s opened nine out of 10 times.
How to Improve Your Direct Mail Response Rate
Even when you’ve already seen a positive response with your direct mailing efforts, there’s always room for improvement.
In general, your response rate will increase once you reach maximum exposure for your brand and you have zeroed in on your target audience and converted them into potential leads. Lastly, by setting specific objectives and supporting them with a compelling call to action like discounts, coupons, and limited-time offers, your direct mail response rates are also bound to increase.
