One of the most basic reasons anyone starts a business is to make money. Right? Even if you’re a non-profit, you have to have income of some kind to fund what you’re doing. Businesses make money (or earn income, however you want to look at it) in so many ways – selling a ton of products or soliciting for donations – it’s impossible to count them all.
Creativity, aside, the point is that to keep the doors open, you have to make more money than it costs you to get it. It doesn’t take a fancy business degree to know that. Staying ‘in the black’ can be critical to keeping your trucks on the road, your people employed, or inventory on your shelves. A well-done direct mail campaign should be a central part of your business strategy.
For as many ways as there are for businesses to make money, amazingly there is a pretty short list of things you have to do to make sure your direct mail activities don’t end up costing you more than you’ve invested. Consider what these four things mean to you and the success of your business:
- Return on Investment – This comes down to what you want to get out of the campaign. You cannot boil the ocean, and everybody knows the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Consider what your goal should be (e.g., 10 new sales or 50 new leads from ‘x’ number of prospects in the pool you’ve targeted). And then figure out what you’re willing to invest to reach that number of new sales or prospects.
- Rate of Return – In 2018, the average response rate for a House List was a glorious 9%! That means for every 100 postcards sent out, you were likely to see 9 responders. [NOTE: The response rate for a Prospect List was closer to 5%.] The rate of return impacts your budget, which impacts your potential for new sales/prospects. Narrowing your target pool (like we love to preach here) can aid you in reaching the maximum number of ‘right’ prospects, therefore increasing your potential rate of return.
- Understanding Value – Depending on whether your goal was more sales or generating more leads, you’ll calculate the results differently. Obviously, it’s easy to understand how much you spent against how many sales you were able to make from the targeted postcard recipients, giving you the ratio of investment-to-income.
- Plan Around the Corner – Once you’ve conducted the research, generated the campaign, and tallied the results, you’ll be in a position to better predict future activities. You’ll know what it takes to generate outreach to your targets. You’ll know what resonated positively with your audience that improved their engagement with your business. You’ll know what language and approach to take (or avoid) to increase the rate of return for your next campaign.
What if you could say with confidence that you’re going to invest in the stock market and get a 35% return? Amazing, yes? What if you could say the same thing about your business? You’d absolutely be earning more than you put in.
By having a better grasp on the cost of doing business versus the investment required to see your business grow – and taking advantage of the tools to make it grow – your business is guaranteed to see better results.
Give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109. Let’s talk about ROI and ROR and UV ASAP! We can’t boil the ocean for you, but we CAN help put you in position to generate elephant-sized results from a great direct mail campaign!