Bar chart showing conversion rates of two direct mail series, with the second direct mail series achieving a higher conversion rate than the first.

Case Study: Adding a 2nd Direct Mail Effort

Adding a 2nd Direct Mail Effort Improves Conversion Rates (and so does a deadline)

Have you ever wondered if it’s worth it to mail to the same list twice?  Our client did, and here are the results we found:

Using an in-house list with a renewal offer to retain financial services, we initially mailed to a population of over 15k households with a direct mail package consisting of a letter, application and reply envelope into a #10 window envelope.

Initial response rates were over 6%, and the client was very happy.

About 2 weeks later we mailed to a portion of that same list with the exact same package, and conversion rates more than doubled to 14.93%!

This was an overall increase in response of 139.9%!

Here are the details:

Mailing EffortMail QuantityConversionsConversion RateMailing Effort
1st Effort15,0599376.22%N/A
2nd Effort4,30164214.93%139.90%

The data clearly show that a second effort of direct mail has a very positive effect on ROI, not just because of the increase in response, but also because that you can often re-use the same list for no additional cost or at a discount, which essentially lowers your kit cost.

Direct mail is a persistent medium has to be handled by the recipient, as opposed to digital ads and emails that are considered ephemeral media, (meaning it is very short-lived) and literally disappears into the ether.

Our research has even shown mail pieces have been retained and responded to after more than 4 months!

An additional contributing factor was that there was also a renewal deadline, (the same on both packages), and the procrastinators realized that they had to act in order to maintain their services.  Even if you’re particular offer doesn’t have a specific deadline, there are many things that can be done to create a sense of urgency.

Want to learn how Century Direct can help you increase your ROI?

Reach out to us today!

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This post was written by Eric Seid