Figuring out how well people are responding to your marketing campaigns is vital if you expect to see a positive return on investment from what you spend on advertising. Too many people create large advertising initiatives, involving different types of media, without having the infrastructure to accurately measure the response rates of cross-media marketing campaigns. When you are able to track what is working and what is not working, you can route your marketing dollars towards what you have had verifiable success with in the past.

Each marketing channel has its own unique challenges which you need to be aware of and have a plan detailing how you are going to get a potential customer to visit your website, make a purchase, request more information, attend a webinar, or setup an appointment.

Direct Mail Marketing

Setting up a direct mailing campaign will get your message in front of your target audience. Generally, you will need to have a special website specifically for direct mailing recipients, or sub-page of your current website which is featured prominently on the card/letter. When someone visits that specific link, you will have your first bit of information to work with.

Every visit you get is from someone looking at what was mailed to them, then actually going to your site. While this is a good start, you still need to convert that visitor. This is where knowing the response rates of cross-media marketing campaigns is crucial since putting something in their mailbox has a cost. Your visitor needs to have their own unique way of making a purchase or generating a lead, distinguishable from any of the other methods you are promoting. If this is for a website, a separate order form should be available for these visitors to use from the link advertised on the mailing material.

Email Marketing

A successful email marketing campaign may look similar to a good direct mail marketing campaign. Getting a good “open” rate is a great metric to keep track of since an unopened email will never result in a sale. Once the customer opens it though they need to be convinced to click a link taking them to your site which identifies them as having come through an email. After they have gotten to your site and they decide they want to buy, they should still be tracked as an email user. They should also be tracked as to how they were first introduced to your organization.

Digital Campaign Marketing

Tracking visitors in a digital campaign is relatively easy since you can specify what link you want a visitor to go to once they click your ad. The important metric here is your (clicks:impressions) rate. If you are paying by the impression, you want as many clicks as you can get. If you are paying by the click, you want to make sure that your ad copy spells out extremely clearly what a visitor should expect on your site. The companies you purchase these ads from will generally keep track of these rates for you, all you need to do is get the visitor to a checkout page or lead generation form that is only easily accessible by clicking one of these ads online, as opposed to your generic checkout page.

Taking all of these metrics together will give you an accurate picture of the response rates of cross-media marketing campaigns, and show you where you should be targeting more heavily in the future.