Running a direct mail campaign is a great way to bolster your marketing efforts. But these strategies won’t be nearly as useful to you and your business if you aren’t measuring your direct mail success – especially your return on investment, or ROI.

Without measuring ROI or other metrics, such as response rate or conversion rate, you’ll be missing out on valuable insights about how well your direct mail is performing. Fortunately, not only are these metrics from your direct mail campaigns easy to capture and use to your benefit, but they also tend to out-perform those of other marketing platforms.

The stats about direct mail speak for themselves:

  • Response rates are 36 times greater than emails.
  • The median return on investment of direct mail is 29 percent.
  • 35 percent of consumers have made a purchase or donation after receiving direct mail. (1)

Simply put: direct mail works! But what metrics should you be using to track how well your mailings are performing? Here’s some of the key things you should be keeping an eye on, as well as how you can easily measure them.

  1. Response rate: This is perhaps the most basic indicator of measuring your direct mail success. Seeing responses to your campaigns shows that your customers are reading what you send them.
    How response rate is measured: Divide the number of responses you receive from recipients by the total number of mailers sent.
  2. Conversion rate: This is the percentage of prospects that converted into paying customers through your campaign.
    How conversion rate is measured: Divide the number of paid customers generated by the number of responses to your campaign.
  3. Average revenue per order: This is a more in-depth examination of the kind of revenue that your mail campaign generated and can help you see the buying power of your target audience.
    How average revenue per order is measured: Simply average out the orders made by converted customers, by adding them up and dividing them by the total number of consumers.
  4. Return on investment (ROI): The most important metric of any marketing campaign, ROI shows if you’ve made a profit or loss on your investment. It shows if you’ve landed yourself a successful marketing effort, or if you need to rethink your tactics in future campaigns.
    How ROI is measured: Subtract the campaign cost from the revenue total. Then, divide that number by the campaign cost.

Tracking your metrics is easier than ever, thanks to contemporary innovations in direct mail. Some very easy ones to incorporate are QR codes that send your target audience to a specific website that only appears for your direct mail campaign; these allow you to easily see how many people were driven to your website because of the mailer.

You can also use a trackable phone number printed on your mailer. These forward the customer to your standard business number but enable you to count the number of recipients that used the mailer-specific number.

Coupon codes are another easy tracking method – and they encourage purchases, too. Using a specific code that’s just for your direct mail recipients can inspire customers to spend money with you, while also giving you a sense of how enticing your marketing is.

Ready to start seeing what direct mail can do for your business? Contact Allegra – we can help!

(1) https://www.lboxcomms.com/insights/direct-mail/how-to-measure-direct-mail-campaign-success