When you send out a direct mail piece, people can respond in a lot of different ways. They may use the link or QR code you included, or they may not. Just because they don’t use the information on the mail piece doesn’t mean they didn’t respond. They may have responded digitally, and if you don’t have a plan in place to capture digital responses, your reports won’t reflect accurate results.
Individuals may search for your company online or make an in-store purchase, leaving only their email address or phone number. It’s not uncommon for these types of responses to get overlooked or attributed to the wrong campaign or source. You can combat this and capture digital responses to your direct mail campaign by following 4 basic steps.
1. Use Complete Data
Before you send out your direct mail piece, make sure your data is complete. In order to capture all of your responses, you’ll need names, addresses, and email addresses. This will help you target individuals and accurately capture response data. If you’re missing some of the information, data providers can append the data you need.
2. Gather Known Responses
Since the people on your target list will respond to your campaign in different ways, make sure you pull all of your response data. Who visited the special link or used the QR code? How many purchases used the discount code on the mail piece? Did people fill out your online form requesting more information? Who reached out to your sales team or booked a meeting? Most importantly, pull your purchase history from the time the mail was delivered to the end of the promotion. This purchase history is typically 4-8 weeks but can be longer depending on your audience. Remember, direct mail has a longer shelf life than email and digital advertising.
3. Identify Website Visitors
People may be responding to your direct mail by searching for your company online or by visiting your website without using the special link. You can capture those responses by using website retargeting. This process involves installing a pixel on your site that will capture the visitor’s information. Data scientists can then append information to that data and identify who visited your website.
4. Match Up Responses
The next step is to run a response analysis. This is a process where you take your purchase history and your known digital responses and match them up with the people who received your direct mail piece. Because you targeted individuals and made sure you had their physical addresses and their digital addresses, you can identify exactly who responded and see how they responded to your campaign.
Marketing plans and budgets are constantly changing and evolving. Capturing all of your direct mail responses enables you to accurately show how well your campaign performed and make informed decisions about where and how to invest your marketing budget.
If you want to capture digital responses for your campaign, contact our team. We will be happy to assist you.