The Simple System That Gives You Control over Your Marketing and Your Income.

By tracking responses we mean keeping records of people who call or come into your business and what promotion they received that caused it. You can call it a “response log” or a “leads log” or whatever you like, but it is imperative you keep something to record what came in and where it came from.

This sort of tracking is vital to your operation because it gives you much-needed data on how your postcards (and any other promotions) are doing, which postcard designs and lists are effective and what needs to be changed. This allows you to continue what works and fix what is broken.

And it’s much easier than you might think.

First Things First

Who is going to answer the phone? Depending on the size and type of operation you have, it might be you or a receptionist or a roomful of sales reps. Whoever it is, make sure you set up someone with the specific job. This might seem dumb to mention, but often the reason response tracking fails is because the person answering the phone didn’t know how to handle it, so it’s important to be clear about it.

As a note of advice, your tracking information becomes more reliable when you have only one or just a few people responsible for the job. Because there are fewer people to train (and fewer people who might forget), it is easier to be sure it is always done consistently and that means your information will be more accurate.

In any case, make sure someone is there to answer the phone or you’re just throwing your money away. Even if you have a voicemail, you’ll lose a lot of people that don’t want to leave a message.

Okay, so you’ve got someone there and you fire off a bunch of postcards. Now what?

The Simple Question

When anyone calls, make sure they are asked how they heard of you. Simple, right? That’s really all it takes. If they are a lead or a potential sale, get their name along with how they heard of you and any other details.

Sometimes you will find it necessary to ask a couple of times or change the question in order to really get an answer. A good receptionist will be skilled in asking this question in a number of different ways:

How did you hear of us?
What caused you to give us a call today?
What can we thank for your call/visit today?
What brought you into the store?
What led you to contact us?
What promotion are you responding to?
How did you get familiar with our company?

After getting the hang of it, it becomes as natural as asking for their name and is smoothly worked into the conversation without a thought.

Keep a Written Record

Once you gather this information, you’ve got to write it down. It’s easy to neglect this or forget, and much vital information can be quickly lost or forgotten. So it is absolutely necessary to keep a written record of some kind and be somewhat ruthless about making sure everything gets written down.

Whether a notebook with columns on it or an Excel spreadsheet, use what is easiest and note the information down every time someone calls. At the very least, you should include the date of their call/visit, their name and contact information and how they found out about you.

And don’t forget to include any leads that didn’t happen to call in or visit live, such as any emails or voice mails received. Ideally, you can obtain as much information on these as the live callers, but they should be logged in any case with as much information as possible.

A log such as this is helpful for several reasons. Not only does it allow you to analyze your marketing, but it also can be a great resource to make sure you don’t forget to follow up on a potential sale.

Taking It to the Next Level

For more advanced postcard marketers that mail different postcards to different lists, it’s also important to track additional details such as which postcard design people got and what industry or list they are in. You can simply ask them what the card looked like and keep that on your log, or you can print a code of some kind on the cards when you mail them and just ask for that.

Another valuable use of this log is to track any other promotions or lead sources that you have: emails or billboards or magazine ads or referrals or tradeshows or other things. By doing this, you can expand your view to all your marketing, see how your different promotions work together and compare the results of one marketing channel with another.

Putting It All Together

Once you’ve got several weeks worth of data together and done at least a few mailings, it’s time to schedule an undistracted meeting with your log to analyze your findings. This is where the fun begins.

You will find that in order to get useful answers, you need to get some other additional items together. You will probably need a calendar and record of the various promotions that you sent out and when. You might also want to have some actual copies of the pieces that you sent. If you have any sales records, it would be good to have them to hand.

Get all this together and start crunching your numbers. How many responses did you get? What was the percentage? What promotions were the most successful and which actually led to the most sales? Look over the actual card designs and note the offers or statements on the successful pieces.

What was the average sale amount? What percentage did you close compared to the total number that responded?

Aside from the simple basics of lead quantities, sources and values, there are more subtle numbers to consider as well. How many mailings does it average for someone to respond? What is the length of time between mailing and response? Do particular types of customer seem to respond better to particular promotions?

Other interesting factors should not be forgotten. Do you notice an increase in referral business after a few months of a direct mail campaign to customers? Are people suddenly responding better to your billboards after you start mailing them postcards? Often marketing campaigns work off each other and equal powerful results.

Hindsight Becomes Foresight

No matter what your results, now you know the real deal based on actual numbers, not guesses. And you can use this information in a lot of different ways.

First, it should now be clear what needs to be changed and what needs to be kept the same or expanded.

Second and most important, you have now put a level of predictability into your marketing that allows you to control your future income. For instance, you now know that your postcards tend to average a 0.5% response rate, of which 30% will close and pay you an average sale of $3000. So you can feel confident paying $5000 to send 10,000 cards because it will lead to $45,000 in sales over the next couple of months.

Similarly, if you want to make a certain amount of income next quarter, it becomes very easy to figure out how many postcards you need to send to hit the goals that you’ve set for yourself.

Summary

By consistently keeping records of the number of postcards you mail, which designs and lists you use, and your responses and return on investment numbers, you can literally calibrate your marketing machine to produce the results you want exactly when and how you want.

We are always being told that hindsight is 20/20. With the above systems in place, this becomes true of your marketing as well. Instead of aimlessly sending postcards and hoping it will go well; you can use that 20/20 hindsight to predict your future success.

Start tracking your responses today. Take the guesswork out of your marketing and grab control of your income. After all, isn’t that what you’re looking for?

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