Make the Most of Your Print Marketing – Track It!

What’s your most successful print piece? Could you say without a doubt, or would it all be a guessing game? If you’re unsure where and how your ad dollars are going, it’s time to learn one of the most important tricks of the trade – tracking your print marketing ROI.

Check your call-to-action. What do you want your prospects to do with your print piece? How strong is the message, and is it clear enough that recipients will know what to do next? The call-to-action is vital and will serve as the core of your ROI tracking efforts. Be sure to include it on any and all promotional pieces.

Choose your tracking strategy. There are many choices when it comes to tracking the source of sales and leads. However, some of the most popular, and most successful, include customized website landing pages, QR codes, and coupon or promo codes tied to special offers.

Set up a control. In order to set a control, you need to track all of your print pieces at the get-go to see which campaigns are most successful and which are not. That way when it comes time to re-order from your print company, you know which offer performed best and can use it as the control piece. Now all that’s left to do is make adjustments to the weaker pieces using a new code.  

At the end of the new campaign, compare the results against the control. If the new campaign has performed better, it will replace the old control and the next campaign will be run alongside it to try to further improve response rates and ROI.

The Big How-To. Ok, now that you know what the basics, here’s how to track your ROI:

1.       Website Responses

·         Track web responses through PURLs (personalized landing pages), complete with a code customized for each user. PURLs can help guarantee more consistency between print and electronic media, but you can also use analytic tools, such as Google Analytics, to track the flow of the customer buying process.

2.       Response Codes

·         QRcodes, coupons and promos can all be used to track responses. The best way to encourage prospects to actually use them? Offer them something good. The better the offer, the more likely consumers are to use them, which in turn means, the more clear your ROI results will be.

Bonus Tip: When handing out materials, use a location-specific code so that you can see which regions are most responsive to your product or service.

So remember, get cracking on your ROI tracking and soon you’ll be seeing the fiscal rewards!

Do you have a great tip or strategy on tracking ROI you’d like to share? Tell us in the comments!