Digital reports have gotten harder to trust. Browsers block more tracking than they used to, and more visitors decline cookies. One sale shows up in two platforms’ reports, and each platform takes the credit.
That makes it worth a look at the channel where the tracking belongs to you. When you measure a print campaign, you count scans, calls, codes and orders that you set up yourself and that land in your own records. Nobody else’s platform sits in the middle.
The one condition is timing. A printed piece is measurable when the measurement is designed into it before it goes to press. You can’t add a code to a postcard that’s already in the mail, so the planning comes first.
Decide what counts as a response
Before design starts, pick the one action you want from the person holding the piece. It might be a quote request, a booked appointment, an order or a visit to a location.
That choice shapes the layout. A mailer built to drive phone calls needs a number someone can read at arm’s length. A mailer built to drive online orders needs a short web address and a reason to use it this week.
Decide where the responses will be counted, too. Somebody has to log the calls, and the form fills have to land somewhere you can pull a report from.
Give every response a way back to the piece
A response only counts for the campaign if you can tie it to the campaign. These are the common ways to do it:
A QR code points to a page that only this campaign uses, so every scan is yours to count. You can also print a short campaign URL, a web address that goes on the piece and nowhere else and leads to its own landing page. With a dedicated phone number that appears only on this piece, every call to it came from the mail.
An offer code is one the customer gives at checkout or reads to your rep. The last is a match-back: after the campaign, you compare the mailing list against the customers who bought.
Plan on two of these. Plenty of people get the piece, skip the code and buy anyway, by typing your company name into a search bar or walking in the door. A match-back catches them, and a code alone never will.
Make the code unique to each recipient
Variable data printing lets a digital press put different content on every piece in a run. The name, the offer, the photo and the code can all change from one piece to the next. We run variable data jobs on our digital press.
That means the code or web address on a mailer can belong to one recipient. When it comes back, you know which person on your list responded, and you can see which neighborhoods, customer types or offers pulled best.
The codes travel with your mailing list, usually as a column in the data file. Ask your printer whether they can generate the codes and personalized addresses or whether you need to supply them.
If per-person codes are more than the campaign needs, use one code per version.
Hold out a group that gets no mail
Some of the people you mail would have bought anyway. A holdout group tells you how many.
Before the mailing, set aside a random slice of the list and send those people nothing. When the campaign ends, compare how the mailed group bought against how the holdout bought. The gap between them is what the mail earned.
The slice has to be random. If you hold out your weakest prospects, the mail will look better than it was.
The holdout gets pulled when the list is prepared. If your printer also handles the mailing, as we do with our mailing services, tell them about it when you send the file so nobody mails the full list out of habit.
Read the results over weeks
Email and paid ads report back in hours. Mail takes longer. A postcard gets set on a kitchen counter, stuck to a refrigerator or handed to the person who makes the decision, and responses keep arriving long after the drop.
Set the reporting window before you mail, and match it to how long your customers take to buy. Take an early read to make sure the codes and numbers are working. Save the verdict for the end of the window.
Keep the campaign phone number, the landing page and the offer code live the whole time. A mailer that still works after its code has expired is a response you paid for and then turned away.
Bring it up when you ask for a quote
Measurement costs the least when it’s part of the job from the first conversation. When you ask for pricing, tell your printer what response you’re counting, how many versions you want and whether each piece needs its own code. Then the codes and versions are planned into the job.
We’re an independently owned commercial printer in Fenton, Missouri, and the owners pick up the phone. Call (636) 343-1167 or request a quote, and tell us how you plan to measure the campaign.
