It is important to measure the success of all of your marketing campaigns, regardless of the medium, so that you can compare the results and determine which and what type of campaign you should be devoting the most resources on (hint: it’s the one that generates the most interaction). You also learned about the ease and effectiveness of direct mail marketing, but is your current campaign providing the results you want? Is it completely worth it or are you throwing away your time and money on it? How do you know? Are you tracking it? And if you aren’t tracking, how do you know what offers work better, best, or not at all? The only way you can continue to improve your strategy and add value to your business is by analyzing every single aspect of your direct mail campaign to ensure better results.
By utilizing these tracking tools, you can measure what garners the greatest response from your direct mail customers, what receives the most engagement, what leads to the most sales, and what accomplishes the most goals.
Here are the ways you can track your direct mail:
- Call Tracking: Your business receives a pseudo phone number to be printed on your ad that, when called, reroutes to your place of business. The calls are recorded so that you can keep tabs on what campaign motivated your customer to contact you, how the call was handled, and whether or not it ended in a sale.
- QR Codes: This allows your on the go, mobile friendly customer to whip out their smartphones and scan your Quick Response code that will essentially act as a hyperlink to wherever you want to take them virtually. Once they arrive on your landing page, you are able to track what actions they take from there. (Tip: Always test your QR Codes before finalizing and avoid these other common QR Code Marketing Mistakes)
- Coupons: Create a unique discount code for your coupons so that you can track them once your customers redeem them. However, keep in mind that consumers often submit their promo codes on public websites (i.e., RetailMeNot) to share them with others. While that may not bother you because business is business, it does alter your ability to track because you are unable to decipher which customers purchased from you as a sole result of your awesome campaign and which purchase because your coupon code was posted online for them.
- Mail Piece: Simply put, this requires the recipient to bring the mailer physically with them to your business in order to receive the discount or offer.
- Text Messages: As the growth of mobile users rise, it is becoming absolutely necessary to accommodate their swift response by incorporating text messages as part of your campaign. You can even link a microsite to your QR code that sends a text message to the visitor after they have left your site that would proceed to follow up with them on whatever they expressed interest in while on your site.
- URL: If you use a URL, you have to make sure that they are custom made for each campaign so that you are able to differentiate which customers were directed to your site because of the specific campaign you are currently trying to measure and not your regular website traffic.
Direct mailing campaigns undoubtedly elicit a massive response. Tracking your return on investment may seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools and strategies, you can have everything you need to measure your successes so that you can plan and budget accordingly. Once you have properly tracked your campaign, your business can prosper and you can be confident that you aren’t throwing away money on a useless marketing campaign.
Source: http://www.giant.marketing/tracking-direct-mail-let-us-count-ways