We’ve said this before, and we’ll probably say it again, but let us reiterate: 70% of the success of a direct marketing campaign is dependent on the quality of the data. But this poses the question: how do you even determine the quality of a data set?  Unfortunately, this assessment can often only be made after the initial campaign results.

So now what?

Direct Marketing Strategy

This is where it is so important to design an overall Direct Marketing Strategy for each initiative, to set realistic expectations and to carefully plan the campaign execution.  Setting expectations and planning execution is heavily dependent on the level of reports available.  Reports and analysis of previous campaigns to understand the relationship between the data and the campaign performance and to then set benchmarks.  Detailed real-time reports and analysis to monitor and understand current campaign performance and data response rates.

Research, Test, Adjust, Repeat

This is what we refer to as a progressive direct marketing strategy. It includes four distinct phases – researching your target audience, testing their response, adjusting it for improvements, and repeating the process again and again until you get the results you need. Continual analysis, testing, and adjustment are essential in ensuring that a strategy is constantly evolving and improving. The advantage of Direct Marketing is that it's relatively easy to test various assumptions or approaches to a campaign, assess results on representative samples of data easily and quickly and managing the level of risk and costs before spending millions on the roll-out.  Detailed and effective reporting enables direct marketers to be agile and maximise response rates, which increases the ultimate campaign profitability.

Factors you should be paying attention to when analysing data and designing direct marketing campaigns

• The most important factor is ensuring product or service relevance and appropriateness to the base
• Timing is everything – how and when to contact prospective clients based on past activity
• The higher the affinity to the brand, the better the chances of creating credibility and being given an opportunity to introduce the product and service
• Determine the source of data to refine sales process
• Appropriate distribution channel based on product and target market

Having the best reports in the world, cannot guarantee the success of a campaign, only a deep understanding of the relevant key drivers, together with (often hard-earned) experience, loads of passion and a splash of stubbornness, will result in success.  And if the initiative is still not successful, you will know when it’s time to spend the effort and resources on other direct marketing strategies, still having gained valuable insight and understanding of the world we like to call Direct Marketing.