News
 Tips for Efficient and Accurate Mail Tracking
By Craig Simpson, freelance direct mail consultant
If a campaign is not tracked properly, you could end
up wasting thousands on your next mailing. As an
individual in direct mail, you spend a great deal of
money to send out your sales material. You want to
learn as much as possible from each campaign so that
you can maximize the effectiveness of each mailing.
Careful tracking will show you exactly what works
and what doesn't.
Obviously, you must track the number of leads/orders
that respond to your campaign. Not only do you need
to know the overall response from the mailing, but
you also need to know how many leads/orders were in
response to each mailing list and each sales piece
(if you are using more than one).
If you are testing a new sales piece against your
current control piece, you need to know which one
performed better and which lists it performed better
on. For example, let's say you are sending a
business opportunity offer and you're using two
different sales pieces; a 16-page letter and a
32-page magalog. You may find that the 16-page
letter outperforms the 32-page magalog to the
business opportunity lists, but not to lists outside
the business opportunity category. Therefore, you
might conclude that it is more profitable to mail
the magalog to one group of lists, and the 16-page
letter to just the targeted business opportunity
lists.
In order to properly track each version of the sales
piece and each list, it's critical that you do a
good job of list segmentation. Keeping track of the
list history is also important for knowing which
lists to order in the future. By keeping a list
history, you track the performance of one specific
list over the course of all the times you've mailed
to it.
Let's say you rent the “Simpson Direct Stock
Advisor” list for every mailing you send out. How
did it do when you mailed it in first quarter? Do
you see a lift in response when you mail it in one
quarter versus another? Do you see a decline in
response the more frequently you mail it?
Keeping track of list history helps you identify
which lists perform consistently well, which lists
are on a downward trend, and whether any lists work
better in one season than others. For example, a few
years ago I mailed several campaigns to five or six
different lists that were directed to farmers. By
looking at the list history, I discovered that the
farmers did not respond well during their harvest
season, but they were very responsive during their
off season. Had I not tracked the list history, I
would not have mailed to the farming lists again due
to the lack of response. List history reveals
details that help you know the best times to mail to
specific lists, and when to avoid them.
---Source: DM News April 23, 2008 (www.dmnews.com). Craig Simpson is a freelance direct mail consultant. Reach him at craig@simpson-direct.com.
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