How to Track Direct Mail

Marketing experts state that you should be able to track 99 percent of the responses to your direct mail program. Even though direct mailing is a relatively inexpensive way to advertise, it is wise to strive for the biggest bang for your buck. If one advertising tactic worked 50 percent better than another in a market test, it would be safe to say that it may work well in another market test. But how do you find out which direct mailer worked better than another? The key is keeping track of customer responses.

Instructions

1. Decide early on when designing a direct mail campaign how you would like to track the responses of the campaign. If you are testing two different approaches, identifying the best campaign could be as simple as tallying the number of responses received from each campaign.

2. Assign different codes and symbols to reply cards. You can set up two different 1-800 numbers and track the number of phone calls received by each number.

3. Tally the results and create a spreadsheet, graph or pie chart to easily visualize the results of each direct mailing you would like to track.

4. Use the results to help you design future direct mail campaigns and to help you to determine whom to mail them to.

References

• Track Direct Mail Responses - Brief Article