How to Help Your Customers Track Direct Mail Results

Helping your customers track how effective their direct mail is benefits you. You become more of a strategic partner than just a print and mail provider. It also gives you an opportunity to prove what direct mail works best. You can use the results to make suggestions and A/B test them to see what really works.

Tracking results means you can see what resonated best with their customers and prospects. Show them what got the most interaction, and what led to the most sales, sign-ups, or other actions. Help your customers use the information from tracking to focus on the things that work, preventing them from losing money on the things that don't.

Focusing on what works best and spending their budget in the most effective way is key to great direct mail results. Before you launch any direct mail campaign, set a system in place that will allow you to track the results.

7 Tips on Ways to Track Your Direct Mail:

1. QR codes: The landing page for each scan should be created specifically for each campaign. You can easily track who is hitting the landing pages and what they do from there.
2. URL or PURL: As with scanning the QR Codes, you need a unique landing page for each campaign.
3. Coupons: Make sure to create a code on the coupons that you can use to track responses as people redeem them.
4. Donation reply cards: Create a code for each campaign, imprint that code somewhere on the reply device so that if they return it with their check, you can track which campaign it came from.
5. Phone Call: Use a special phone number for each campaign or if that is not possible, ask for a code you imprinted on the piece as part of your order intake.
6. Text Messages: Many people find that text messaging it the easiest way to respond. When you setup your campaign either create a special number for each one or require that as part of the text message they need to enter a code from the mail piece.
7. Mail piece: One of the easiest ways to track direct mail response is to require the recipient to bring the mailer with them in order to get a discount or some other special offer.

Testing is the key to constantly improving direct mail. By using one or more of these tracking methods, you will help your customers know what works best and to improve on that over time. Creating effective direct mail is all about knowing what works and what does not.

Trying to utilize general direct mail trends published by the DMA or others is not an effective method. What you don’t know in direct mail can hurt your customers. No matter what kind of marketing response method you're using, ask yourself first how you will track it.

Give your direct mail campaigns the best chance of success by putting a tracking system in place so your customers can compare and contrast their effectiveness and return on investment. You can work with your customers to decide which methods work best for each campaign you do.