When you invest into direct mail marketing, you greatly expand the reach of your business and the potential to generate new leads, sales, and revenue.
From postcards and flyers, to coupons and brochures, thousands of prospective customers will see, read, and interact with your direct mail campaign.
Ultimately, many of these prospects will convert into customers and many will not.
So how can you maximize the impact of your direct mail offers and optimize your return on investment (ROI)?
Use split testing.
What is Split Testing?
The most common type of split testing is known as an A/B test.
An A/B test involves testing the exact same direct mail piece (same design, same size, same sales copy, etc) except for one different element -- usually the offer.
This simple type of test clearly dictates which version yields the best ROI, as all elements except for the single differentiator are the exact same.
Multi-Variate Testing
As the name indicates, multi-variable testing involves testing multiple elements at the same time.For example, you might test out two different offers, two different postcard sizes, and two different markets.
Over time, you will gather data points from your testing to determine which elements and strategies produce the highest ROI.
Multi-variable testing is ideal when you are first starting out IF you do not have a sense of what works, and what doesn't.
If you have used direct mail before, or if you have collected data from other types of marketing campaigns (email blasts, shared mail, etc), you may wish to run simple A/B tests and make incremental improvements from there.
Creating a Control
After you conduct your initial split test, the winning variation becomes your "control" direct mail piece. Moving forward, you should conduct all new split tests and experiments against your control variation to determine if you receive any lift in conversion rates, lead generation, sales, etc.Each time you find a new "winning" variation, it becomes your new control.
How and When to Test
Testing and improving your marketing should be an ongoing and continuous process. If you are investing time and resources into marketing, it is important to maximize your ROI.How to test is up to you. You can test the direct mail pieces, and all of the elements (headline, offer, format, etc), but you can also test the frequency and reach.
For example, you may find that mailing the same postcard to 5,000 homes once every month, for three months -- yields better ROI than mailing the postcard to 15,000 homes only one time.
The key to making these determinations is to start testing and keep testing. Once you gather data points, you can make informed decisions moving forward.
More Information & Resources
For more information and FREE resources to improve your direct mail marketing, please visit our FREE Resources page.
Good luck and happy marketing!