Responses don’t mean jack.

That’s not to say that they don’t matter – they do let you know that things are happening and that people are responding, but this is only activity. Thinking that a campaign was successful because you got a bunch of responses is like celebrating your victory only halfway through a race.

While you’re cheering, your competitors are still sprinting ahead.

And if none of your respondents end up buying anything, or if they did buy but weren’t profitable, then it wasn’t a success. What truly matters is ROI.

Today we’ll explore a few scenarios where responses did not lead to ROI and how you can avoid the
same mistakes.

Here are 3 times that responses did not equate to ROI, and what they can do differently:

1. The wrong people responded

Sometimes people just want to talk. That was one of our client’s realizations when they sent out a postcard campaign that saw a nearly 40% response rate. People of all socioeconomic strata and a great variety of backgrounds and professions took the time to hand-write responses to their postcards – many of them in monogrammed envelopes and some of them even several pages long. As the mail flooded in, our client at first thought it was too good to be true!

In this case it was. What all these leads shared in common was that they were all retired. Our client had sent a postcard campaign to an area of California with a high density of retirement communities and nursing homes and very few (if any) of these letters denoted real buying interest. Many of them politely declined, but then proceeded on a different topic. They simply wanted to talk.

The simple solution? Better targeting. With digital printing technology you can see this coming – you know where each of your postcards are going and you can adapt for next time to focus on only your ideal customers.

2. The wrong customers bought

Some customers are more demanding than others. One B2B client of ours discovered this in their mass postcard campaigns designed to open up a large, untouched segment of price-sensitive customers. Their three-touch postcard series worked, and they started to sign on more and more of these clients – the responses were there and the revenue was there. These clients paid. But they also took.

They took, well, just about everything that they could get their hands on. These smaller customers had smaller teams, and their owners were stretched thin on resources to begin with, so they leaned heavily on our client’s open promise for unlimited support and clogged the phone lines day and night. In response, they were forced to hire more support staff to keep up.

In the end, this was a money-losing proposition. Why? Because they reached the wrong customers! Generally, the larger the clients, the less hand-holding they’ll need, and with ProspectsPLUS’s targeting systems you can make sure that you’re only going after clients who are going to bring in the big bucks.

3. The offer wasn’t mutually beneficial

This last one came the closest to being successful – they got the high volume of consumer responses that they wanted, from people who might have been the right people, but in the end, their offer came back to bite them. This customer installs curtains, and they offered a $50 gift card to anyone who scheduled a home consultation using their postcard offer code. The phones positively rang off the hook.

The only problem? When their sales reps stopped by, they were met with open doors but blank stares. No amount of free advice or decorating expertise could get them un-stuck from their avid desire for the gift card. Many people who otherwise would have been great leads were so fixated on the free gift that they paid no attention to the consultation and the sales conversions languished in the single digits.

The solution? Predicate your offers on some sort of a give-get! Make your rebates applicable after some sort of a purchase or you’ll get a flood of well-meaning people who want free things but who were never going to buy to begin with.

Ready to get some ROI on your responses?

Responses, as you can see, are not everything. They’re an indicator, a mile marker that lets you know that you’re on the right track. What really matters however is new customers and your ROI, which needs to factor in not only what it cost to acquire those customers, but what it cost to maintain them.

And there you have it, all of the warning you’ll need to make ROI your primary focus! Get out there and fire off your postcard campaigns with confidence today knowing that you properly targeted your audiences.

Need a little help getting the right people to buy?

Sometimes it’s great to run your plan by someone, and that’s why Opportunity Knocks is here. They’re experts in more than direct mail – they’ll consult you on your entire marketing strategy and then run it for you! Give them a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 to see what you can accomplish together.