The New Rules of Lead Generation

Step 4: Test Your Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail is probably the hardest lead-generation tactic to test effectively, for several reasons. First, direct mail is such an expensive tactic that it needs to be done in bulk. You need to print and ship a large number of direct mail pieces (e.g., 5,000 or more) in order to get a measurable response to your campaign. Also, unlike online tactics such as search engine marketing and social advertising, once you’ve started a direct mail campaign, you can’t instantly stop it in order to rework your creatives or change your target audience.

It’s easy to measure your delivery rate with direct mail by the number of returned envelopes. If you send out 5,000 envelopes, and 500 of them are returned to you (due ...