Today’s customer buying process is often an integrated experience. Even if you have no digital components supporting your direct mail, prospects will still incorporate digital into their buying process. They might research your website or check out other consumer reviews. Determining how well your marketing performed when different channels are involved is difficult. The good news is your direct mail campaign probably did better than you think. You just haven’t been able to capture all of the responses. The best way to see true results is to run a matchback analysis and then map out your responses to identify high performing areas with a spatial analysis.
Capturing Missing Responses
Let’s say you want to target a prospect named Mike, so you send him a direct mail piece. When Mike receives your ad, he goes online and checks out your website. A few days later, Mike receives your email which inspires him to add a product to his online cart. However, Mike gets distracted and abandons his cart before making a purchase, so you retarget Mike with a social ad. Mike remembers the item he wanted and completes a purchase. The entire journey involves multiple pieces, all working together. The question is how do you account for people like Mike who responded to your direct mail campaign but used an integrated buying process?
In order to capture those interactions, you might include a QR code, special discount, or a PURL (personalized URL) on your mail piece. These are helpful in identifying some of your responses, but they cannot account for all of them. How do you find the people who typed in your website directly or made a purchase and forgot to use their coupon?
A matchback analysis takes the names and addresses on your direct mail list and matches them up to the individuals who made transactions, giving you real results. Regardless of what process the consumer used to make a purchase, you can see exactly how well your campaign performed.
Increasing Direct Mail Efficiencies
Another great way to see how well your campaign did is to run a spatial analysis. This process maps out all of the prospects you targeted and those who made a purchase. This will highlight high performing areas as well as the areas with zero responses also known as dead zones.
You can take the spatial analysis information and remove the dead zones from your list, reducing your marketing waste. When you remove the inactive zones, your response rates will increase. Some of our customers have seen dramatic results by cutting out their dead zones.
Once you’ve located your highly successful areas, you can focus your marketing investment in those neighborhoods and get your message in front of the people who are most interested. You can also find look-a-like neighborhoods and add them to your list.
How to Get Started
In order to run a matchback or a spatial analysis, you’ll need the names and addresses from your direct mail list. You will also need to pull a transactional file – ideally with names and addresses. If you’re not collecting postal addresses, you can run a reverse append from the emails or phone numbers you’ve got to get the missing data. If you’re not collecting customer data at the point of sale, the first step is to put a system into place for capturing that information.
Customer data is incredibly valuable in helping you see real responses and giving you insights into who your customers are, what they want, and where they’re coming from.
If you think your direct mail campaign probably did better, reach out to our team. We can help you see exactly how well you did. We can also help you find ways to increase results.