Measuring KPIs and results from direct mail and other marketing activities

Measuring results is the ultimate in accountability for marketing spend. It’s not always easy, so you have to be extremely clear when setting internal expectations. The best way to do this is to revisit those strategic objectives we set out right at the beginning, and determine how you plan to measure the success of those objectives.

That success may not be tied to a singular activity, that’s where the strategic structure (table 1) comes in. You can show how activity has collectively achieved an objective, whilst also measuring success at an individual activity level. The collective success KPIs are for the business, the individual success rates are for you.

Let’s work through an example:

Table 2: Linking KPIs to Strategic Objectives

The initiative in column 2 will be one of several initiatives, so while the activity in column 3 doesn’t directly drive revenue, it will contribute to the success of the subsequent initiatives linked to this Strategic Objective. The individual action KPIs are different and related directly to how it will drive success in those other initiatives.

Being very clear about how you plan to measure success is critical to getting and maintaining internal support and buy in to marketing activity. When running campaigns for example, let’s go to the brochure conversion workflow example, the reporting could potentially look like this:

What’s being shown here is testing an initiative to insert a postcode with a tailored and memorable offer relating to a first time purchase. The Project KPIs are very specific to that test, but you are also showing how it rolls up to the wider objective of 20% growth.

This is important because while the test may or may not work, overall it can still contribute to the bigger picture.