Direct Marketing Best Practices: Test, Measure & Learn

Every direct marketing campaign is an opportunity to test and learn – and then apply what you have learned to make the next campaign even better.

For planning direct mail campaigns, I follow these steps.

Step 1, ID. Identify goals
Step 2, Setup. Setup campaigns to meet/exceed those goals
Step 3, Execute. Deploy campaigns
Step 4, Measure. Analyze results and apply what you have learned
Repeat. Apply what you learn and repeat Steps 1-4 for closed loop marketing campaigns

To test, measure and learn from direct marketing campaign, I use the Four R’s for direct marketing as a guide.

– Audience: Segment by demographic profile &/or behavior. Learn how different segments respond
– Messaging/offers: Vary calls to action and learn the cost/benefit of each
– Timing: Test different lead dates and frequencies for pre/post events, purchases or announcements. Measure and compare campaign performance
– Creative: Test different media. Different media provides a different customer engagement, be it email, direct mail or telemarketing or any combination

Whether you have resources for predictive scoring, regression modeling or multivariate data sets or you just want to send a promotional letter to your customer list, I believe these basic tips can be applied to any campaign. I use them to keep my focus. I hope you find them useful as well.