Direct Mail Marketing Response

Different Audience, Offer, Creative

All too often, novice mailers will poorly record the details of their campaign and neglect to duplicate those more successful than the others.  For those attempting a mailing for the first time, many neglect to include some type of measurement vehicle.  They struggle with the details of getting the direct mail marketing mail piece into the mail stream while forgetting how they are going to measure the success.  So duplicating those successful tests become increasingly more difficult.

Consider every campaign a test.  No direct mail marketing should be performed without testing something.  And always mail those successful campaigns a second and before doing rolling it out to the masses.  You should always validate your response from your first test.

If you mail to a different audience from the first test, or make a different offer, you are essentially testing something else entirely.  In doing so, you should expect to achieve a different result that the first.

Timing

Timing is also something to consider when attempting to duplicate your response rate from the first test campaign.  Is your product or service seasonal?  Is your product going to be overlooked because of the holiday?  Timing is important to the success of a direct mail marketing campaign.  Again, if you want the same results, you need to repeat as closely to what you did the first time.

Competition

Your competition may have seen your first test direct mail marketing campaign and decided they have to offer a similar or better product.  What was once a great offer by you, can quickly become second place in the land of the competition.  If your competition is mailing the same as you or something more inventive, will this affect the ultimate response result from your campaign?

The goal with direct mail marketing is to always be testing and testing again.  You should be measuring the target mail list, creative, or offer.  Measure your response, and lack of it.  Duplicate your successes and change up your failures.  Direct mail marketing is a science that can be as predictable as you make it.