B2B companies are increasingly reconsidering their digital-first mentality for sales and marketing campaigns in favor of the tactile appeal of direct mail marketing. The challenge for many brands with incorporating direct mail into a larger marketing strategy is knowing how to measure the success of their campaigns.
While response rates and conversions tell one part of the story, there are other key metrics marketers need to consider when evaluating their mail campaigns. Here, we’ll look at a couple of performance metrics that can help you assess the ROI of your direct mail campaigns.
Creating direct mailers — postcards, self-mailers, and transactional mail like account statements and invoices — that incorporate QR codes serves a variety of purposes. First, they build a user-friendly bridge between the print and digital space to help customers further explore your brand, products, or services. This makes your mailer more valuable to your target audience and increases the likelihood that they convert on an offer or even make a purchase.
But QR codes also provide an important glimpse into the performance of your mailer via scan data. The number of scans, location of where those scans happened, and type of device used help paint a clear picture of how useful and relevant your audience found your mailer, and this performance data can also help you identify potential issues with your mailer that you can correct down the road.
For instance, a low number of QR code scans could mean that your call-to-action was simply not compelling enough for your audience to act. Or it could mean the content and messaging of your mailer was not as relevant or applicable to your audience as you initially thought.
In addition, if your QR code scan launches exclusive video content that can only be viewed on a specific platform, related metrics like video views and video view time can also give you a peek into mailer performance.
The USPS® offers postage discounts for direct mailers that incorporate digital technology components like QR codes, so using them can reduce your costs and optimize your investment in direct mail marketing. Quantum has a wealth of experience in helping brands take advantage of these programs.
Direct mail postcards that feature special or exclusive offer codes with personalized, targeted messaging increase the likelihood that your audience redeems the offer, thus providing you with critical performance data on how many people engaged with and acted on your mailer.
For example, imagine you send a personalized direct mail postcard to a targeted list of contacts with a 20% off offer code on a specific product or service that is applicable and relevant to the contacts on the list. The number of codes redeemed — and the total sales figures from those redemptions — against your print and mailing costs gives you a concrete idea of your ROI. Plus, the number of offer codes redeemed provides more data on whether said offer was compelling enough for your target audience to take action.
We took this kind of data-driven approach to help a healthcare organization enhance the effectiveness of their outreach and measure the effectiveness direct mail has on increasing enrollment.
Using personalized URLs (PURLs) in direct mail can help brands that execute high-volume direct mail campaigns determine the ROI of their mailers in a couple of key ways. Incorporating PURLs into mailers can help you see which direct mail pieces generate the most website or landing page traffic. Traffic that converts on a website or landing page form as a result of these visits helps you evaluate your cost per contact.
The personalized nature of PURLs also means you can analyze how many times individual recipients visit your website page. This provides a much more detailed look at how specific contacts are engaging with your direct mail, thus helping you optimize any additional communication or outreach.
For instance, if a high-value recipient on your mailing list does not act on your CTA to visit your website, you can create an additional mailer and/or email as a reminder, perhaps with a special discount code or offer to further encourage their engagement.
While these approaches to direct mail can help you better understand the ROI of your campaigns, there’s much more to this story. Quantum Group can help you create performance-driven direct mail that helps you grow your business.
Contact us to get started with direct mail that delivers meaningful ROI.