Start Today: Tracking Your Print Marketing ROI

Do you know where your print marketing money is going or which of your print marketing plans has been most successful?

It is not uncommon that we meet people who believe keeping track of print marketing ROI is impossible or at least very difficult. Keeping track of ROI is not only important to know which plan has been most successful in the past, but also because advertising budgets are shrinking across the nation.

Before you can track ROI on printed marketing materials, establish the sought after response and include a call to action on all your brochures, flyers, and other promotional material that allows you to measure the response the material is designed to generate.

Popular and successful strategies to track the source of sales and leads include voucher or coupon codes tied to special offers and allocated to different print media and contact channels, customized website landing pages, and QR codes.

What’s the strategy?

Track the ROI of all print materials and see which campaigns are profitable and which are not. 

When the time comes to reorder, keep the best performing offer, use that as a control, and make changes to under-performing materials using a new code.

Replace campaigns which don’t perform as well as the control, making one or two small changes and unique codes for each variant. At the end of the new campaign, if the control still outperforms it, you make more changes and try again. If the campaign outperforms the control, it becomes the new control and you keep that campaign and run another alongside it to try and improve response rates and ROI further.

Here are some ways to do that:

Postal order forms
Tracking the source of orders or leads from postal order forms is relatively easy, as you can include a tracking code on the form itself.

Phone orders and inquiries
By allocating voucher or discount codes to each brochure, flyer or leaflet, identify which items are generating results and calculate the value of each before ordering reprints. Also, train customer service and sales staff to ask where customers who don’t provide a code heard about the company, and track these.

Website responses
Track website responses through the use of personalized landing pages (PURLs) including codes customized for each customer. This ensures their exposure to your offer remains constant between printed and electronic media (using the same look and feel, the same headings and call to action, etc.) and reduces consumer confusion, thereby increasing conversion rates.

You can also use analytics packages such as Google’s analytics to track which pages customers view before ordering or abandoning an order, and use this information to reduce leakage and increase ROI.

Using response codes
Use QR codes or discount coupons and vouchers to track responses. Ideally, include a text code in the URL for your website that matches the discount or offer code collected by phone staff, and include a QR code for those who want to use them.

Response codes that aren’t tied to a special offer give the consumer no incentive to share the code with you, so always add value to the code in some way; whether it’s a discount, a free bonus, or extra product to encourage customers to use the code.

If you hand materials out at trade shows, use location specific codes so you can see which regions are more responsive to which offers.

Action without a plan is rarely successful. Know where your print marketing money is going.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com

Direct Marketing with a Small Budget

At Tray, we serve non-profits, national brands, sports teams, and universities. In general, any organization with a need to deliver their marketing message in print or electronically, in B2B or B2C environments, can take advantage of all Tray has to offer.

But what about an organization with a small marketing budget? You may end up feeling like you’re playing a game without a full team on the field.

A small marketing budget can seem like a major hindrance to a successful marketing campaign. As you are already probably aware, direct marketing is ideal because it can be targeted, is trackable, and you can see exactly what ROI you generate for your business.

So where do we go from here? First, establish your budget and consider the following questions:

1. How many mailers am I sending?
2. Will I need to rent a mailing list? How much will that cost?
3. What is the optimal size and format for the mailing? What postage will it require?
4. Should I outsource my creative, printing and mailing tasks? What’s the cost of doing so?
5. What quality of materials do I want to use? Will I be using custom photography or stock images?
6. What kind of testing will I run?
7. Will I include a special offer? What costs will be associated?
8. Will I need to hire help to handle responses from the campaign?
9.  What are the costs of other media I may use to complement my direct mail efforts?

If you have a tight deadline or a limited marketing budget that is ok. Our highly skilled staff has decades of experience helping customers complete their most challenging projects on budget and on time.

Whether you have complete answers to the above questions or still need some figuring out to do, contact us today. We can help you strategize and mobilize a successful direct marketing campaign so you can feel like you’re playing with a full team.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com

Maximizing Marketing: Integrating Digital with Direct Mail

With the emergence of so many social media platforms and digital marketing enhancements, it is critical to integrate them into your existing direct mail marketing strategy. The popularity of mobile phones and the apps we love we so much has grown so high that for many people, these apps aren’t just popular, they’re necessary to run their businesses and personal lives.

Direct mail is still one of the most powerful, driving forces behind a successful marketing plan. This is an interesting fact to note considering that twenty years ago CD players and beepers were practically ubiquitous in our society.

Now that these are on their way to being completely obsolete, we can see that direct mail is still as prevalent and necessary as it was twenty years ago and beyond.

We came across this study which revealed the following:

“According to research by Mail Print, 85% of consumers sort through and read selected pieces of mail every day while the other 15% let it sit for two or more days at a time.  75% of consumers are saying that they are examining their mail more closely in the recent months to search for coupons and discounts.  40% of consumers say that they have tried a new business after receiving direct mail, and 70% have renewed relationships with businesses that they had previously ceased using.”

With direct mail still being so potent, we recommend putting out direct mail that features hallmarks of creative imagery, captivating information, and clear design – with digital elements. A QR code creates engagement, either through static content or mobile commerce.

Furthermore, QR codes lend themselves well toward tracking purposes, creating a direct mail campaign that engages, follows through on active consumer participation, and makes it easy to clearly track ROI.

Also consider integrating personalized URL’s (PURL’s) which are also effective drivers for websites and mobile platforms. These direct prospects to personalized microsites customized to suit their particular needs to interests. At the microsite, marketers can easily capture individual responses and data.

How will you integrate direct and digital? Tell us in a comment below.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com