A Tale of Two Campaigns
January 31, 2017   Dave Lewis

Sometimes late at night if I can’t sleep, I’ll sit around in my bathrobe with a cup of hot cocoa and compare marketing campaign results.  OK, this may make me unusual – everyone has their own hobbies – but I do see interesting things from time to time.  I thought this one might be worth sharing.  It was two campaigns for the same client, in fact for the same product, with very similar creative.  They were mailed about six weeks apart.  They were both oversize postcard selfmailers, they both had a coordinated email; they both would have given the prospect a free trial of the product.  The difference was the presentation of the offer.  In the first campaign general information about the company was featured, and nowhere was the free trial explicitly presented.  Sort of hidden in the text, the prospect was invited to visit a web site (it included a PURL) to “learn more.”  Turns out prospects aren’t that interested in learning more – they want you to give them something in return for them visiting your site.  Similarly, the landing page primarily told the prospect about the company, and nowhere did it provide a clear offer and call to action.  The results of the campaign: So with a mailing of about 4,000 pieces with a coordinated email they did manage to get 134 folks to visit their landing page, which is not a bad response.  But the lack of a clear offer resulted in zero conversions.  No one took them up on their offer.  Bummer.  In investigating the results, we also noted that the vast majority of the landing page visits were from a prospect typing in the general URL (GURL) as opposed to the PURL.  The GURL may have been a bit too prominent on the mail piece.  Too many times a client will lose confidence after an experience with our least favorite line:  “Direct mail just doesn’t work for us.”  One benefit of tracking response with the SnailWorks dashboard is being able to identify what does and doesn’t work, and then doing it again with a new better strategy. After reviewing the campaign with the client, SnailWorks campaign managers suggested some changes: 

• Craft a stronger offer;
• Make the offer the centerpiece of the mail piece, email, and landing page;
• Add a prominent PURL to the mail piece;
• Make the GURL less prominent.

In the end, the offer was very similar, a free trial – it was just much better presented.   Interestingly, the second mailing got exactly the same number of landing page visits from a larger volume of mail, but this time almost a third of those visits converted to a product trial, the objective of the campaign. By having the PURL as the dominant response link, our client was also able to identify almost all of the landing page visits that did not become conversions, so they could receive additional marketing efforts.  Simple changes to the creative were able to make the campaign much more effective.  The client was very pleased with the ROI on this campaign (not so much on the first) and continues to refine their campaigns to get even better response in future campaigns. The takeaways from all of this: 

• Always plan a series of campaigns – one-and-done will never allow you to optimize your results;
• It’s all about the offer – make sure you have an offer that your prospects will find value in, and make sure to present it clearly;
• If you are using PURLs in a campaign – and we think you should – make them the featured response path.  GURLs, if included at all, should generally not be prominent;
• Pay attention to your results – see what works, and what doesn’t, and adjust your campaigns to optimize response.  Keep marketing.

And maybe most of all, let SnailWorks help!!  We’re good at this stuff, and we can provide objective advice on how to make your marketing more effective.  Our Big Marketing Brains are included free with every campaign we process.  Take advantage!

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