Marketers know that direct mail campaigns can be a valuable tool for business. However, how will you know if your campaign is working? By employing a few tricks of the trade, your mailing can be tracked, measured, and refined to maximize its effectiveness. We’ve compiled best practices for easy mail tracking success below.
Mail Tracking Tools
By selecting specific tracking methods for every point of contact within the mailing, you’ll be able to measure response and have the data to make improvements for the next campaign run. Here are a few tricks of the trade that will help provide tracking data for your next mail effort, providing valuable information on how, when, and who received your mailing.
The Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb)
Used internally within USPS, the Informed Visibility system is a highly sophisticated tracking operation this data is also available to marketers and shows where each mail piece is within the delivery process, providing added visibility into the mail stream.
For example, if you are sending a reply card to your mail recipients, you can track its return to find out the number of people who sent one back and when you will receive them. This helps you prepare for incoming mail and any protocol that follows. Additionally, knowing when your mailing arrives (e.g., “in-home” window) is extremely beneficial, allows you to target the recipient with additional marketing efforts, as well as prepare for incoming customer responses. Our Mail Tracking Services leverages the Informed Visibility data from USPS to generate reporting that gives you a detailed view of how well your direct mail campaign is performing.
Unique Phone Numbers
Another easy and useful way to monitor direct mail responses is by using a trackable phone number. A dedicated phone number can be displayed on mailers and forwarded to your business line to measure conversions. A toll-free number or local number is recommended for a better response rate. If IMbs are used in conjunction with a unique phone number, you can use the “in-home” window to activate the phone number, saving you money by using the service only when you need it. Testing different creative, each with unique phone numbers, can also give you valuable insight as to which offers draw the most responses.
URLs and PURLs
On-line response tracking can be made very simple when combined with custom landing web pages, or URLs. Traffic data will indicate how many people visited your page from a specific mailing. With added tests, you can use two different URLs to measure which creative or offer yields better results. Be certain to use unique URLs that aren’t used anywhere else, allowing you to differentiate between your normal web traffic and your direct mailing campaign traffic. It also helps to use a short URL that is easy to remember, like www.companyname.com/free-product. When sending out a direct mail piece without a targeted list, URLs are a good option. These pages collect the information needed from all mail recipients and provide the data needed to create a customer database.
Personalized URLs, or PURLs, take the idea of customized landing pages a step further by creating a personalized URL for each mail recipient. The content on the page would be created especially for the user, creating a connection and encouraging purchase or sale. These powerful tools generally perform better than direct mail campaigns without PURLs and are among the most cost-effective way to track direct mailings.
Coupon Codes
Even if you aren’t tech-savvy, it’s still fairly easy to track your direct mail promotions. A simple coupon code can prove useful in determining how well your sales strategy works. Whether your customer redeems the code in-store, online, or via phone, you can test various offers against one another to see which ones generate the most sales.
QR Codes
For a more high-tech implementation, QR codes are a simple way for recipients to reach a unique landing page. The code is read by a smartphone, directing the user to the landing page, providing you with insight into your website analytics to help measure response. QR codes can be utilized for either personalized or generic web pages.
Information Management
Whichever methods you use for tracking your mailing efforts, it’s crucial that you record and manage the data for later use. Setting up a dashboard for each campaign can make all the difference in keeping tabs on all of your mailings and how they perform. A campaign dashboard can be as simple as a spreadsheet where you record all the necessary data to process future campaigns with reliable results.
Mail Tracking and Coordinated Campaign Services
Aside from building a dashboard yourself, SnailWorks can provide in-depth, simple but powerful reporting that can ensure more successful mailings with ease. We provide an all-in-one dashboard for direct mail campaign management. Track inbound and outbound mail delivery, while coordinating triggered emails, telemarketing, and other tactics to maximize your conversions. The easy, smooth workflow and detailed reports are what our customers love most, along with the boost it gives their direct mail campaigns.
A leading provider in mail tracking services, SnailWorks’ cutting-edge technology gives its clients powerful tools to build their direct marketing campaigns. Our expertise in mail tracking and direct marketing has yielded an easy, user-friendly platform that measures, refines, and enhances your mailing efforts. Contact us today to see how we can boost your direct mail response with our mail tracking services.