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Evaluating whether customers are following
through on the targeted calls to action
included in your mailpieces—whether you
asked them to visit your online store or scan
a QR Code
®
—will help you determine the
success of your direct mail.
Conversion rates are another important
measurement, showing how many customers
acted on offers included in your mailpieces.
Did people take advantage of the discount
code included on the postcards you sent out?
Did they sign up for your newsletter? (Looking
at conversion is particularly important for
businesses with longer sales cycles, as high
response rates don’t always translate to high
conversion rates.)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)—all of the
costs involved in bringing in a new customer
through your omni-channel campaign,
including your direct mail efforts—should also
be calculated. You can do so by dividing all of
the costs spent on acquiring customers by the
number of customers acquired.
3
Having a solid
grasp of your CAC will help you optimize the
return on your campaign.
While there are many ways to measure the
success of your omni-channel direct mail
campaign, these are a few of the most
important. For help in determining your
overall return on investment (ROI), which
should take into account all of the elements
discussed above, check out the USPS
®
free
marketing impact calculator.
Measuring Success
Before you begin your campaign, it’s a good idea
to estimate what kind of results you expect to
see and consider whether you’ll need to change
any elements of the mailing to reach these goals.
Consider running a pilot campaign to assess
which messages resonate with your customers.
Before diving in, take the time to establish the
key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be
most helpful for your business. A few KPIs are
discussed below.
Key Performance Indicators
Response rates for direct mail can vary widely,
depending on your product, industry, target
market and campaign quality. On average, you
can expect a response rate of 5% to 9%.
1
But
there are always exceptions. Nonprofits, for
instance, sometimes see much higher response
rates, while those selling complicated,
expensive products are more likely to see
lower response rates.
Marketers who send out direct mail that’s
more dynamic—in other words, coordinated
with digital efforts—saw a 63% increase in
response rates.
2
Start by assessing customer activity through
your campaign’s trackable QR Codes
®
, PURLs,
coupon codes and phone numbers. What
resonated most with your customer segments?
QR Codes
®
that linked to the product web
pages of items they viewed online? Postcards
that built excitement around in-store events
promoted on social media?
1
“Response Rate Report: Performance and Cost Metrics Across Direct Media,”
ANA | DMA, November 2018.
2
“Direct Mail Conversion Research,” USPS, February 2019. Please note:
All statistics were based on a survey of 75 marketing decision-makers.
3
“Customer Acquisition Cost: The One Metric That Can Determine Your
Company’s Fate,” Neil Patel, April 2015.
Step 8