If only it was all cute and furry like the dogs above. Most often it’s messy, cumbersome and a part of the job that no marketing exec ever wants responsibility over. Spreadsheets, dashboards, BI tools, SQL pulls. Yet, in today’s world of never-ending data and the ability for all our customers to come to us from every perceivable angle, we have to know where they came from and how they finally arrived at our doorstep.

We all arrive at our destinations from different means of transportation – we drive, we Uber, we take a train, plane, bus, walk, boat – but eventually we get where we want to be. Sometimes we walk in, sometimes we just hover at the door, contemplating our next move. Marketing takes the same route.

We can mail, mobile offers, email, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram, but hopefully our customers get to us via one of these channels or maybe through a multitude of channels. But have you ever thought about their travels and HOW they finally arrived at your business, WHY they arrived there, and did they purchase or not? Was your campaign part of a house data file, or was it an acquisition campaign to brand new customers?

For better or worse, direct mail has some of the highest response rates of all the marketing channels. The reason is, you can get very creative, and highly target the data involved. Direct Mail has one of the highest response rates for Acquisition marketing because it creates brand awareness when a tangible piece of advertising is placed in front of the consumer. Email has one of the lowest for acquisition. So many times, marketers can only recite the metrics for those that have purchase from them – the conversions – as opposed to those that hovered by the door, but didn’t walk in. The problem with NOT knowing these people, is that you don’t know if your creative, data, offer, format, channel or more than one of these worked or didn’t work… and since you didn’t know, you probably gave up. One and Done. What if you could track it? What if you could start with your direct mail, track it to various channels by campaign or data segment and see how a particular campaign responded? You could then make tweaks and adjustments in real time – maybe adjusting the landing pages or social media. The follow up print or email campaign could then reflect the knowledge you gained from some of the response, not just the conversions. Those hovering at the door may finally walk in because you tracked them, understood what they were looking for, adjusted your campaigns, all because of one direct mail piece and one piece of data.

Wouldn’t you just love to know how to track your entire campaign not just email or digital? Follow your customers? Understand their response behavior? Don’t wait until you have more time to do it, because we all know that will never happen. Historically we know that this will

ultimately lead to more conversions and increase your ROI, thus lower your costs. Give us a shout and let us show you how you can take what you’re currently doing and just do it smarter, track it, close the loop and gain the insights to increase your response rates.