Step 4: Test Your Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail is probably the hardest lead-generation tactic to test effectively, for several reasons. First, direct mail is such an expensive tactic that it needs to be done in bulk. You need to print and ship a large number of direct mail pieces (e.g., 5,000 or more) in order to get a measurable response to your campaign. Also, unlike online tactics such as search engine marketing and social advertising, once you’ve started a direct mail campaign, you can’t instantly stop it in order to rework your creatives or change your target audience.

It’s easy to measure your delivery rate with direct mail by the number of returned envelopes. If you send out 5,000 envelopes, and 500 of them are returned to you (due to incorrect address, change of address, etc.), you can assume the other 4,500 were delivered. So you have a delivery rate of 90%. But measuring an open rate for a direct mail campaign is next to impossible. You have no way of knowing how many recipients actually open the envelope, and how many just throw it away without opening it.

Your best strategy for testing and measuring the effectiveness of a direct mail campaign is to do it on a market-by-market basis. For example, if you have a national campaign, pick three regional markets (e.g., Cincinnati, Phoenix, and Kansas City), and do test campaigns to measure the responses to your offer in those markets. If the direct mail package performs well, you can then roll it out to other markets.