Mistakes to Avoid When Compiling Direct Marketing Reports

Everything step you take in a direct marketing campaign should be informed and influenced by our favourite and most precious resource: data. You’ve heard us harp on about how important data is in the past, but we really can’t repeat it enough. Half of the value of a data set lies in its accessibility; the format in which it is presented. That’s why we’re sharing our knowledge on creating robust reports and how to avoid the biggest mistakes in reporting.

Relevant Reporting

When you’re dealing with large set of data, fatigue can set in quite quickly. This is especially true if you have to sift through reams and reams of irrelevant data. Having too many reports or reports with every single result and ratio possible is tiresome.

Rather ensure you have a couple key results to compare with expectations. Using that information, you can then determine whether it’s necessary to drill down into the details to answer specific questions.

Real-Time Reporting

In direct marketing a small mistake or an incorrect assumption at the beginning of the campaign can have a snowball effect resulting in escalating costs, to name the least. That’s why it’s so vital to monitor campaign results on an hourly basis when you’re just launching. Properly interrogate the numbers if the results are below the expected levels and implement a solution before the problem can get worse.

“Crap In, Crap Out”

Reports are only as effective as the quality of the data used to create the report. In Direct marketing where inputs are often reliant on agents capturing information (i.e. call results), the results are dependent on human intervention and can be manipulated. So, the more automated or system driven the data input is, the better the integrity of the data and the validity of the report. Simply put, effective data gathering leads to effective campaign results; or “crap in, crap out”.

Timing

Timing is of the essence and acting prematurely is as bad as acting too late.

For example: an Underwriter deciding to roll-out a campaign based on the 1st months successfully collected premiums, a day after the billing date, when the collections seemed particularly good is a classic example of acting prematurely. This is also where experience is valuable, as we know that it takes the banks on average 2-3 days to confirm rejected collections, which would significantly decrease the overall success rate.

Distribute Reports To The Right People

Send reports to the right people, not just all the people. The more people copied in reports, the bigger the risk of no-one paying particular attention to the details or taking responsibility for analysing, recommending changes and implementing changes.

Reporting on results is meaningless unless someone actually looks at the reports and makes business decisions based on the results, monitors the validity of the decision on new results, and makes changes at the right time.