Defining success for and understanding the results of your direct mail campaign can be difficult and ambiguous. Here’s a simple formula for using your website to help gather concrete information about your target audience’s response to your (next) mailing.
- Copy your existing Home Page, or, create a new Welcome Page and store it in a folder called “www.yourdomainname.com/march2006/” – where “march2006” is replaced by a unique identifier for your current direct mail campaign.
- In your direct mail piece, give your prospects only the address above (with the new folder name – no quotes)
- Before the day of the mailing, take a snapshot of the statistics for your website. Print the pages, or, write down the numbers that you will be interested in following after the direct mail piece is sent.
- Several days after you expect that your prospects will have received your direct mail piece, revisit the website statistics pages. Compare the numbers you see with the numbers that you printed out or copied down before the mailing went out.
- Continue to check for the time period that you feel is appropriate given the size of the mailing and your call to action or special offer.