Q: Question for you:
What does your research and expertise tell you about the effectiveness of mailing guides to all residents?
We currently do the following each quarter:
a. Mail guide to past 5 quarters worth of customers
b. Insert guide into our local paper with distribution of 28,000
c. Insert into neighboring city with distribution of 10,000
d. Distribute an additional 10,000 to various drop points in our community (e.g. library, Transit center, private businesses).
I would like to mail directly to each resident home (26,000+), continue to mail to the past 5 quarters customers and continue our drop point distribution (and totally drop the newspapers inserts).
Assuming costs are the same between the 2 approaches, I ‘assume’ you would recommend the direct mail approach, yes? If so, why? Or why not, and based upon what research?
A: You are very wise to examine the effectiveness of your distribution. This can not only help you target your distribution more effectively, but can help you with getting the highest return for the least amount of expense. We know that the highest responses will come from your best customers, and overall your response rates from previous customers will be higher than those from people to who have never participated in your classes. We also know that you can test mailings to demographic segments that are like your present participants but who do not take your classes. You may find that
you get a good response from these segments.
In general, mailing to each household is not as cost effective as targeted mailings and it is not something LERN recommends. There are reasons that certain segments of the community do not participate in your classes and mailing to them will not make a lot of difference in their responses. You can, of course test your mailings to certain areas, and if the response is sufficient, you can mail to addresses in these areas.
LERN recommends that you analyze your mailings by carrier route. This will give you the best picture of where you are successful and where you may want to discontinue mailing. LERN can do this analysis for you if you send in your registration information. If you are interested in having a segmentation analysis, email Debbie Barron at Debbie@lern.org. She can tell you what we need and the format in which you need to send your data.
Mailing to past customers is something we definitely recommend. However, limiting mailing to only those who have participated in the past 5 quarters may not be the best strategy. You may be failing to reach some people who would be likely to sign up. Consider extending your mailing to those who have participated during the past 8 quarters and track your responses to see if this is cost effective. You can test this with a mailing during the term when you typically have the highest number of enrollments.
Newspaper inserts do not typically perform as well as direct mail in generating registrations. Again, you might test this, but it is not something that LERN typically recommends. You should be sure to track every distribution method you use to determine whether each is cost effective. Brochure drops are a good way to reach people. The cost is minimal, and this is typically a cost efficient way of getting your image out in front of the community and getting the word out about your program. Many programs indicate that this is the second most effective strategy for brochure distribution after direct mail.
LERN does recommend mailing twice to your best customers. If you do a general mailing, and follow it two to three weeks later with a targeted mailing to past participants, this has been shown to increase enrollments in many cases.
Do not forget to use on line strategies as well. While they do not generate the same levels of response as distribution of the physical brochure, they can be very effective in raising your image in the community, driving people to your print brochure, and increasing your visibility. These strategies are very cost effective, so there is not really a downside to supplementing your print promotion with online efforts.