Direct mail remains one of the largest applications in the financial services industry, especially in seminars. Direct mail helps to advertise dinner seminars and obtain registrations for potential attendees. However, not all seminars perform well. As a financial advisor, it is crucial to determine the reason why some seminars perform better than others. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how direct mail works and how you can measure the results to keep the vendors that you work with honest.

The job of a direct mail piece is to get qualified prospects to visit the registration page, register for the seminar, or call. The number of people who call is easy to gauge based on the volume of calls received. However, it’s challenging to determine the number of people who registered or visited the webpage. As an advisor, you should be interested in the number of people who visited the page to understand the success of the direct mail piece.

To determine the number of visitors, you should ask the direct mail house or the person who manages your landing page for a Google Analytics report. Google Analytics tracks the number of unique prospects that visit a webpage. If you mail 10,000 invitations for a seminar and only 40 people hit the page, it means the direct mail piece didn’t work. In contrast, if 500 people visited the page, and you only got 20 registrations, you shouldn’t blame the direct mail house but look at your registration page as the problem.

To keep the mail house honest, if they’re managing your landing page for your direct mail seminar, you should insist that they install Google Analytics. You can also work with them on the imagery, color scheme, messaging on your seminar invitation, and other factors that you can split test. Split testing involves trying out different mail pieces to see which one converts the best. This helps you to optimize your mail pieces and improve outcomes.

In conclusion, understanding how direct mail works and measuring the results is essential in keeping vendors honest and improving results. It’s also crucial to AB test or split test your mail pieces, which involves trying out different mail pieces to see which one works best. By understanding how to measure results, you can work with your direct mail vendors to optimize your mail pieces and improve your seminars’ success rate.