Direct mail is one of the most frequent types of campaigns we perform at xclntDesign that is "offline." The reason for that is simple, it works.
We here frequently that "no reads junk mail" or "direct mail is expensive," but these assertions are not based on any supporting evidence from the people who say it. Ask yourself this question, if no one reads junk mail and it's too expensive to work, why do we continue to receive mailboxes full of this stuff? Because it does work!
But we don't want our clients just to take our word for it. We have data to back it up. Our data! We recently completed our digital reporting system for direct mail projects that shows our clients they're response rates and activity associated with a direct mail campaign. How does it work? Pretty simple actually, what we do is when designing the direct mail piece we include a trackable domain name (URL) for your website and a tracking phone number (that forwards to your business). Both of these stay active for 12 months. So to the end user, they see your website and can get a hold of you on the phone. On our end, we see the results!
By using these tracking parameters, we can see who visits your website from a direct mail piece, what they looked at, where they came from, how long did they stay on your website, and most importantly, we can track phone calls and online web form submissions. Using all of this data together, we can figure out two important metrics, the first being "Engagement" and the second being "Conversions."
Engagement is the number of people who interacted with your campaign, either by visiting your website or calling you. Conversions are the number of responses you receive, either through a phone call or a submission of an online form, most commonly referred to as a response rate.
Using this data, along with other variables we already know, we can figure out the cost per piece, cost per conversion and if we are aware your average ticket price, we can calculate your ROI (return on investment). That's very powerful! After the campaign is all done, you can see how much you spent, how much you sold and how much your business profited. With this information you can decide if direct mail is right for you and if it is, perhaps you can also get an insight on any tweaks you need to make the next time to get those Engagement Rates & Conversion Rates to climb. This is unbelievably helpful when it comes to deciding where to put your ad dollars as you can direct the money to channels that work the best.
Contact xclntDesign today and get started with your direct mail campaign!
