Are You Using Call Tracking to Prove Direct Mail ROI?

Call tracking provides vital insight and marketing intelligence to help clients optimize their marketing channels, messaging, and focus. This post takes a look at how three clients benefited from using call tracking to prove and optimize the value of their direct mail.

How are you helping your customers track the power and effectiveness of direct mail? Is call tracking one of the services you offer? Some printers do. Should you be one of them?

A just-released e-book (PDF) outlines the value of call tracking (both basic and advanced) to marketing campaigns and provides a wide range of short case studies showing the results.

Call tracking provides critical insights at all stages of the customer journey, from initial research through purchase and aftermarket interactions. Not only does this help prove ROI from direct mail, print ads, and other marketing channels, but because leads that come in via phone get better results than those from digital efforts, this makes print campaigns look even better.

According to Forrester, calls convert to revenue 10x-15x more than web leads. This is because people who pick up the phone to make a call have a higher purchasing intent and are generally further along in their journey than those who fill out web forms. Plus, the marketer—your client—has the opportunity to close and upsell products in a live conversation.

Here’s a look at how some companies have benefited from call tracking with direct mail campaigns:

A leading Texas-based utilities company used call tracking to analyze the voice interactions that resulted from calls generated by its direct mailings. This helped Pel Hughes, its marketing services provider, optimize the campaigns for what truly generates calls. The results? The utilities company experienced a 100% jump in response rate for a 500,000-piece mailing campaign.
DMW Direct used call data to identify the most productive marketing channels for a large health insurance provider. It found that direct mail drives 53% of the client’s calls, digital marketing drives 26% of its calls, and television drives 21% of its calls. This information has allowed DMW Direct help its client to optimize its campaigns across channels.
For one dental support organization (DSO), 80% of new patients first contact the company over the phone, so it was vital to know exactly how its campaigns are working. Using call tracking, the DSO was able to optimize its marketing mix, including paid search and Facebook ads, television and radio ads, and targeted direct mail. In one market, the DSO discovered that AdWords unbranded keywords generated calls and appointments from new patients at a higher rate than direct mail, for example. This allowed the DSO to optimize its channels in different markets. As a result, it reduced cost per lead by more than 50%.

Call tracking is widely used in digital campaigns, as well, and the numbers are just as telling: revenue increases combined with reductions in cost-per-call and cost-per-lead. But there is nothing magic about call tracking specifically. It’s all gaining more marketing insight. What works and what doesn’t? What components of the marketing effort are most effective?

As MPSs, the more metrics and the more insight you can get into which channels are most effective and why, the more valuable the service you offer to your clients. Should call tracking be part of that arsenal?

Case studies taken from “The Marketer’s Big Book of Call Tracking Success Stories” (DialogTech 2017).