Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Hi jd12,

I suggest you try the direct marketing association:

https://www.the-dma.org/

They have research papers that I think are relevant to your question, as well as white papers that explore best practices.

Good luck,
Joy

The personalized direct mail campaign resonates with prospects because it immediately establishes relevancy. Many marketers fall into the trap of overusing the minimal data they do have, such as customer and prospect names. Instead, these marketers should be putting time and effort into capturing additional data — keeping quality in mind, not quantity.

For example, recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) should be incorporated into your database and a contact strategy. Test different messaging and offers to get folks to respond more swiftly. So your personalized DM will deliver more- the better the degree of customization.

A Response Rate Trends Report released Tuesday by the Direct Marketing Association found that catalogs and direct mail typically produce 2.3% and 2.18% response rates, respectively.

HP made $557,000 in new revenue when a personalized direct mail test delivered a 9.4% response rate. Previously, the HP education division mailed a catalog of courses to those customers. were getting a 0.5% response rate.

Matching an offer to a finely targeted market does increase response rates. When I had my drycleaning business and was papering the neighborhood of 35,000 with a very general offer, I would have response rates of 1 to 2 percent. Refining the offer increased a general offer response rate to 3 or 4 percent.

Eventually I began using information drawn from my customer database, and using RFM techniques as outlined above, I could generate a contact list of 200 targeted customers, and generate response rates of 30 to 60 percent. This was the best use of my marketing efforts and out performed 'mass marketing' techniques by far.

So, its not just response rates for personalized/customized direct mail pieces you need to keep in mind, its also WHO was selected to receive such offers that influence response rates.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network