Question:

Quick question, could you send me some of the LERN data on return rate for sending a second catalog mailing to your top customers? We are doing a school board presentation tomorrow night and wanted to share that information as we are planning to test this with our fall 2018 catalog.

Answer:

Thanks for your question about second mailings. We don't have exact data on return rates of second mailings because very few programs track return rate from one mailing to another. It can be hard because most of the time you are mailing the same brochure twice and determining which mailing the registration came from can be difficult, and often not recorded. We do know that pretty much all programs that went from mailing once to adding a second mailing see an increase in response rate. The main reason for this is that a second mailing typically does not just go to everyone you send to on the first mailing. For a mailing campaign with two mailings we recommend:

• First Mailing: This would be the largest mailing. We recommend mailing to all past participants (at least for the last 2-3 years), any mass mailing you are doing to zip codes or carrier routes (recommended), and any rented lists. For community education type classes we recommend this mailing get into readers hands 6 weeks before the start of classes.

• Second Mailing: This would be a smaller mailing that goes to best customers approximately 2-3 weeks before classes start. Who exactly you send to would be dependent on how many brochures you have for this mailing. You can either mail to you past participants again or shorten that list by pulling out students who are consider your best customers. A good place to start with best customers are people who have taken 2 or more classes and spent more than the average student. LERN's data analysis tool can help build these lists for you.

The reason why it is best to get brochures in the hands of your best customers, or previous customers, twice is that you get a better response rate from previous customers than people who have never taken a class with you before. Your best customers are human like the rest of us and need a reminder sometimes. Often they get the first mailing and forget to register. The second mailing will help prompt those who have forgot. This is far less likely to happen with people who haven't registered before.

We have found that on average a mailing to people who have not participated in your program before gets a 1% response rate. Mailings that go out to past participants get on average a 6% response rate. So the mailing to past participants is roughly 6x more effective. I have attached a graphic to help demonstrate this that show using those two response rates that you can more registrations from mailing 6,000 brochures to past customers than 30,000 to new customers.

This is not to say you shouldn't mail to potential new customers, it is just not as effective to mail to them twice. So it not that a second mailing gets a better response rate because its a second mailing, its because you are being much more targeted with that second mailing.

Let me know if you would be interested in taking advantage of LERN's Market Segmentation Analysis. We can analyze your past registration data and give you a best customers list and help determine what you best carrier routes are. We can also help you develop a brochure distribution plan that includes a second mailing. Let me know if you are interested in this free member service.

Thanks, 

Brendan