Direct Mail Tracking

September 19, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Strategy 

There is a great  free e-book entitled “Pitney Bowes Small Business Survey” compares the different marketing strategies run by small businesses.

In this free e-book is a shocking truth about direct mail is that 80 percent of the participants do not track down the results produced by their direct mail campaigns. Any direct mail marketer can tell

There is still a sizable number of businesses that primarily employ direct mail for marketing purposes (22 percent), a segment that values customer response as a metric to determine the success of their direct mail campaign.

The biggest advantage to using direct mail is how simple it is to measure the results and testing lists, creative, envelopes and premiums and this is only the start of the analysis. This study indicates only a few measure or test the usefulness of direct mail.

How to Measure Direct Mail

The number of respondents to your call to action featured on your direct mail campaign is what matters. This can be measured by foot traffic of customers that enter your store, or responses to a mailing for a paid subscription.

Below are the kinds of mearurement tools for your direct mail campaign:

If you have an e-commerce website you can mail direct mail lists that leads them to a page on your site using s short URL. Coupons can be used for holding s sale, print out brochures or postcards to be sent through the mail each piece can be tracked by a unique code. Toll free numbers on.

How do define success and how to measure it Revenue, Income or ROI

  • Revenue – Sum of the total earnings of your campaign
  • Income – Difference of revenue and cost of goods or profits after expenses
  • Rate of Investment (ROI) – Difference of gains and cost of goods divided by the gain.

The higher the better!

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Email Prospecting With Social Media

September 13, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 

The biggest benefit of direct response advertising is the ability to laser target your message to your acquired list or active customer database.

Blasting a one size fits all to your current customer database or to a randomly selected list, or to a targeted list based on demographics alone, could lead to a high opt out-rate, eliminating future communications with important consumers. This could also get you banned from your email service provider, if you don’t properly use the opt-out feature in acquired email lists.

Social media is greatly overlooked by email marketers and can be found within social media sites like Twitter and even blogs.

Most social media marketing efforts focus on image advertising since many many people on the social networks are turned off by traditional advertising methods.

My favorite social media marketing blonde


The social media platforms claim their influence rankings or number of friends may provide lift. A key to the social networks like Facebook is the complexities of identifying true influencers is difficult to identify and measure.

A strategy that leverages social media channels, is to go with the flow of traditional advertising where brands already have robust platforms, experience and measurement tools.

The reason for the platforms are established where consumers are already comfortable being marketed to, Think of social media is a magnet that brings you to your customers and prospects, allowing you to offer timely and relevant offers based on life stage events, hobbies and interests that consumers openly share.

You can blend traditional data elements to qualify the signals acquired from social media to ensure you are messaging to people who fit your best target audience profile. Facebook offers great demographic targeting by gender, age, political beliefs and interests.

Social Login Buttons: Making the link between social and offline consumer data is key to harnessing the vast amount of unstructured data in the world of social media. There are endless approaches to making this link, but the easiest way to start is by enabling consumers to make the link themselves between their email, name and address with a social ID like a Twitter handle. You can leverage the social media platform’s API and build your own buttons, or leverage a product like JanRain’s turnkey offering.

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