How to Evaluate Direct Mail Campaign Results

Give your customers an incentive to read your direct marketing copy.

Your direct mail campaign loses sales every day unless you find and fix anything that isn't working. Field-testing alternate versions of your direct mail campaign tells you whether the time and money you have invested brings an appropriate return. Effective field tests use multiple direct mail appeals with variations in word choice, level of emotional appeal and strength of the call to action, plus some way to identify which version motivated the customer to accept your offer.

Things You'll Need

• 3 to 6 versions of your sales or ad copy
• Current sales figures for all products
• Premium offer

Instructions

Proofread Existing Copy

1. Read your existing advertising copy, one sentence at a time. Highlight all spelling errors and incorrect punctuation.

2. Create a second copy of your existing direct mail campaign, using the same wording, after correcting the spelling and punctuation. Do this for all variations of your existing advertising copy, if you are already running multiple campaigns.

3. Locate each call to action in your current direct mail campaign. Note any differences in wording between each one.

4. Give each variation of your call to action a number. Create a reference file, listing each variation by number, followed by the wording, including punctuation, of each variation.

5. Create a third copy of your existing direct mail campaign. Substitute the first variation of your call to action for all calls to action in the copy.

6. Repeat for a fourth, fifth and sixth copy of your campaign, depending on how many variations of your call to action are in the original copy.

7. Review all of the test copies one final time, looking for any missing or misspelled words and correcting any punctuation errors.

Create Test Campaigns

1. Add an offer code -- also known as a unique identifier -- to each version of your direct mail campaign copy.

2. Provide a discount or premium with a high perceived value, such as a special report, related product or service, or a personalized and useful keepsake to encourage the customer to use the offer code when placing an order.

3. Send your updated test copy to all your qualified prospects.

4. Log all sales, requests for more information, subscriptions to any newsletter or social media page, referrals or testimonials from existing customers, and any positive or negative feedback that result from your test campaign. Compare that data to all responses from the original campaign.

5. Chart the differences, if any, in response rates, including a breakdown of the total dollar value of all purchases, and the number of new referrals from existing customers, if any.

Tips & Warnings

• Correcting a single typographical error on his website, TightsPlease.co.uk, increased sales by 50 percent in 2011, according to Charles Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please group of websites.

• The wording of your offer can raise sales response rates by 25 to 900 percent, according to "The Business to Business Marketing Handbook."

• While you would soon go broke if you put a dollar in every direct mailing you send, your customers should at least see a value in opening your mail. Publisher's Clearinghouse, Reader's Digest and many other respected companies have included a penny, nickel or car key blank in their mailings, asking for its return as part of a sweepstakes entry. If you send 10,000 pennies with your test mailing, costing you $100, and you get a 10-percent response rate, that is 1,000 customers. If each customer orders $49 in merchandise, you made $49,000 on a $100 investment, minus the remaining costs of your test mailing.

References

• BBC: Spelling Mistakes 'Cost Millions' in Lost Online Sales
• The Business-to-Business Marketing Handbook; Bob Bly