Direct mail remains a powerful tool for effectively reaching target audiences and breaking through the saturated online space. The tactile nature of mail enables brands to forge a deeper, more memorable connection with recipients, helping to cut through the digital noise. Like any marketing campaign, it's crucial to measure the success and effectiveness of direct mail initiatives by tracking key metrics. In this article, we will explore the key metrics for evaluating direct mail campaigns and how they contribute to measuring success.
Why Is It Important to Measure Success With Key Metrics?
Businesses can gain valuable insights into their direct mail campaign, the campaign’s performance, and the level of its success if they measure key metrics. Without measuring any metrics, it would be impossible to determine if the campaign was worthwhile, achieved its purpose and objectives, or if the business made any return on their investment.
It is therefore important to measure the success of a campaign with the use of key metrics in order to report back to business stakeholders the value of marketing efforts, as well as producing valuable insights that could contribute to optimising future business and marketing decisions. Understanding these metrics allows for sophisticated A/B testing of different mail formats and offers, ensuring continuous improvement and maximum efficiency of your marketing spend. Metrics also enable marketers to justify the budget for future direct mail services by providing tangible proof of effectiveness.
Key Metrics to Evaluate the Success of a Direct Mail Campaign
Various key metrics can be used to measure the success of a direct mail campaign. These include:
Response & Conversion Rate
The response rate, also known as the conversion rate, is a fundamental metric that measures the percentage of recipients who took the desired action after receiving the direct mail piece, such as making a purchase, requesting more information, or signing up for a service. This metric directly reflects the effectiveness of the call-to-action and the overall impact of the campaign. A higher response rate indicates a more successful campaign, while a low response rate may suggest improvements are needed for next time, such as adjustments to the messaging, design, or targeting strategy. Tracking the conversion rate helps determine if the direct mail piece successfully motivated recipients to take the intended next step.
Unlike with other marketing efforts, like email marketing, it can be hard to measure response rate as factors such as open or click-through rates cannot be viewed. Response rate will therefore be based on the campaign’s call-to-action, which could be an increase in sales, use of a certain promotional code, call of a phone number or email enquiries. Each campaign is different and therefore the measurable action for response rate will always vary. For highly targeted campaigns, this can be significantly higher than digital channels.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) is essential to assess the financial performance of a direct mail campaign and whether the activity produced enough revenue to cover the costs of the activity. It involves comparing the costs of producing and distributing the mailers with the revenue generated from the responses or conversions. By tracking the ROI, businesses can determine whether their investment in direct mail is yielding a positive return and make informed decisions about future campaign budgets.
Marketing campaigns with direct mail in the mix are 52% more likely to see ROI benefits, according to MarketReach data, and the latest industry reports indicate direct mail generally yields a strong ROI, often competitive with or exceeding digital channels. For instance, the Direct Mail Association (DMA) reports that direct mail can achieve an average ROI of up to 29%, a figure that often outperforms paid search and display ads. This performance is largely due to the high engagement rates revealed by JICMAIL data, which shows that a piece of direct mail is interacted with on average 4.4 times and kept in the home for 7.0 days.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
The Cost per Acquisition (CPA) metric measures the average cost of acquiring a new customer or lead through the direct mail campaign. It helps evaluate the campaign's cost-effectiveness and assess its efficiency in acquiring valuable customers. By analysing the CPA, businesses can compare the cost of acquiring customers through different marketing channels and allocate resources accordingly. To optimise CPA, it's vital to ensure your mailing list is clean and segmented—a key part of our data processing service—to avoid mailing uninterested recipients.
If the objective of the direct mail campaign was on existing customers, rather than prospective ones, then this metric wouldn’t be used to measure success. For retention campaigns, the focus shifts to metrics like Customer Retention Rate or Increase in Repeat Purchases.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) assesses the long-term value of customers acquired through the direct mail campaign. It quantifies the projected revenue generated by a customer over their lifetime with the business. By tracking the CLV, businesses can evaluate the quality of customers acquired through direct mail and determine the impact of these campaigns on long-term customer relationships and profitability. Mail pieces that involve advanced personalisation often lead to higher quality customer acquisition, thus positively influencing CLV.
Integrating Digital and Physical Metrics
To gain a complete picture of success, marketers should look beyond traditional mail metrics and see how direct mail interacts with digital channels. A comprehensive study by the Statistical Research Institute (Statista) confirms that integrated campaigns—those that combine physical mailers with subsequent email or social media follow-ups—often yield the highest overall conversion rates. Measuring how mail drives traffic to a website, often referred to as the Online Uplift Rate, provides critical insight into how direct mail complements your digital strategy. This synergy is a powerful reason why businesses should consider how direct mail complements their digital strategy, rather than viewing the channels in isolation.
Brand Awareness & Recall
Measuring brand awareness and recall are also good ways to assess recipient familiarity with a brand and recall of the direct mail piece, especially if an objective is improving brand awareness. Measuring this key metric involves surveying recipients and can help businesses determine if the direct mail campaign effectively resonated with the target audience. The physical nature of mail is scientifically proven to enhance memory encoding. Research from the Canadian Centre for Advanced Neuroscience demonstrates that the physical interaction with mail stimulates neural pathways that lead to stronger memory recall compared to fleeting digital advertisements. The increased attention time recorded for mail is a strong proxy for improved brand recall, making it an invaluable channel for postcard marketing and other brand-building formats.
Unique URLs & Promotional Codes
Including unique tracking codes, promotional codes or personalised URLs (PURLs) within the direct mailer is a great way for businesses to accurately measure the response, conversion and engagement rates. By analysing the usage of these codes or URLs, responses and conversions can be attributed directly to the mail campaign which provides valuable insights into the campaign's effectiveness, success and ROI. We encourage clients to use unique codes for different mailing segments to gather granular data, allowing for deeper analysis and improved future campaign segmentation, especially for complex envelope enclosing campaigns involving multiple inserts. Integrating QR codes into direct mail campaigns is another modern and highly effective method for accurate, instant digital tracking.
Creating Successful Direct Mail
Measuring the success of a direct mail campaign with key metrics is essential to any business carrying out direct mail marketing. Not only can it prove the effectiveness of the activity but can also influence future decisions and budgets as well as provide insight into customer behaviour and brand awareness.
However, success starts with the physical mailer in terms of design, printing and delivery. At Direct Mail Systems, we offer a flexible solution for businesses wanting to get their direct mail campaigns off the ground. Catering for high to low volumes, we support businesses through the entire process, helping produce a creative, engaging and successful direct mail campaign that is measurable with key metrics. Our expertise covers everything from cost-effective mailshots to complex international direct mail campaigns, ensuring postal discounts are maximised while maintaining high quality.
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