Let’s take a look at the real reasons many authors write blogs or offer up solutions as to tracking direct mail on numerous social media and websites. The hidden agenda is to promote their magical products or services by suggesting ways your business can track direct mail response, if those suggestions are implemented. Now, I am not criticizing these authors, I am merely pointing out the soft –sell approach that is imbedded within an article or online post that is proposing “Best Practices”. 

 Let’s look at tracking direct mail from the consumer’s perspective. If a consumer actually reads a direct mail piece, very few may need or require the stated offer/special unless it has a history of previous services or purchases. Therefore, if the offer is tailored to the actual needs, (IE: vehicle mileage indicates it’s time to replace your cabin air filter, here is a $10.00 off coupon) response rates can dramatically improve. A generic blanket offering (IE: $50.00 off any 4 tires) may result in a low response as many may not need tires, let alone four of them. Now, to think actual customers would take this mail piece, and then log into a PURL (Persistent Uniform Resource Locator or personal landing page) is low at best. For a consumer to log into Facebook or social sites would also be a low percentage unless the offer was revealed on those sites, and not on the direct mail piece. Again, this will be a limited number in the grand scheme of response rates.

 There is also the suggestion that using an 800 tracking number you will be able to measure response by those using the toll free number supplied on the direct mail piece. I would ask, if you are local, would you actually use an 800 number, or would you use the local number? Granted, there will be some measurement using this method. If you do use a tracking number, see if your provider has a local tracking number instead. Generally, most companies have several unused local numbers that can be recruited as the marketing local number and with little monitoring, you can measure your campaign results a little better. Last, you could use an op-code, but you must rely on the human interface to record the op-code when redeemed. Again, I am not trying to discredit authors as I believe an overall collective approach can really produce some valuable feedback and ROI reporting.

When it comes to the value of adding these products to your direct mail campaign, I would ask what will it cost and what is my lift over and above by adding the cost of these tools? Is there a better way to get a better result? Many years ago, I worked for one of the largest outdoor electric sign companies in the world. The CEO stated “When you are marketing to the consumer, your message needs to be understandable by an 8 year old”. His reasoning is that you have milliseconds to grab the attention and be able to sell a product or service at a glance. If it is too complex, it will be ignored. If you have ever driven past an electronic freeway billboard and tried to read this lengthy advertisement in a 3 second drive by glance, you know what I mean. Too much, too busy and too small to read and comprehend. This is very evident with some OEM marketing being used today trying to drive sales and service traffic to Dealerships. It is 4 pages out of the book “War and Peace”. I would never read this, would you? Old school service managers, used to use a simple 3X5 card with a basic service reminder message and it was pretty successful back then (I know, I just showed my age). Today, things have changed and some creative content is relevant, just not that relevant.

So, what is the best answer to track direct mail? First, let’s tackle the look and feel. Keep it simple and attractive. Build the offer easy to understand and make sure the “Value” is spelled out clearly. A good example: Is your car steering wheel pulling or wandering when you drive it? Get a four-wheel alignment for $69.95, normally $109.95 that’s $40.00 OFF. You can see I have asked if there is a need, offered a solution and then offered a special price and explained the savings or benefit. (FAB=Feature-Advantage-Benefit) Another example is, most Dealers use a special price offer on vehicles in stock like $34,988 plus T/L and Doc. fees.

 Realistically, how many people would ask “do we have $34,988 plus tax, license and document fees” in the check book? Not many as most consumers want the vehicle to fit in their monthly budget. How much down and how much a month would make more sense, would you agree? When my current payment is fairly close to the advertised payment, I may be spurred to entertain replacing old “Betsy”.

Now that we have built an attractive understandable direct mail campaign, how do we know it works? Unfortunately the best way to quantify results is to put a process in place for your team. They need to add the discount in your DMS system (op-codes work well here), but then attach the offer to the actual sales/repair order. Then inspect daily to quantify visually those redemptions. I know, you’re saying that is too much work, I don’t have time to do that! Therein lies the problem.

If you want the actual results, you have to have someone quantify by manually checking for these direct mail redemptions. When it comes to email campaigns, this is much easier to quantify. As most vendors can let you know who opened and read the email and who click through to the next page. However, this does not mean they took advantage of the offer and resulted in a sale. So, the previous manual process should still be implemented. Also, we need to realize that just putting your name in front of a customer has value. If I read a Friday advertisement, but was not really spurred to come in, I may change my mind next week and drop in because I just filled “Betsy” up with fuel and she does not have a very good MPG. Your advertisement was the last business I remember having a sale. Remember, every Dealer spends a few dollars installing new plate frames and inserts and every vehicle they sell. This again, let’s everyone know where they purchased it, so it is a subliminal imprint on anyone who reads it.

In short, keep the offer easy to understand, attractive, uncluttered and visually monitor the results. When creating a direct mail piece, following the look of your website adds an element of banding and uniformity.  More importantly, collect email addresses and advise your customers you are marketing this way and going green by not killing trees and loading up their mailboxes. I hope you find this helpful and useful. If you do not see a better result, you most likely did not completely read this article, because I did not follow my own recipe and “keep it simple stupid”.

The author is a well-known automotive marketing expert based out of California. He is contactable via LinkedIn & Twitter.