Testing and evaluation
A key characteristic of direct marketing is its capacity to be evaluated. Direct marketers quickly know how successful their marketing activity has been, as they can identify the responses to specific pieces of marketing activity by coding the response mechanisms (e.g. marking reply coupons with an identifier). This kind of accountability helps marketing managers plan and justify their budgets for direct marketing campaigns in a way which gives the marketing function credibility in frequently sceptical arts organizations.
Until recently, direct marketing would never have been considered to be a cheap form of promotional activity. Experience suggests that as a rough guide you might expect a mailshot to yield a response from between 2 per cent and 5 per cent of those who receive it (although the figure will be a great deal higher if you are mailing to the right kind of people). Whereas television advertising is measured in terms of hundreds of people seeing it for every pound spent, a direct mailshot tends to reach between one and two people per pound (depending on the sophistication of the contents). Using the telephone is more expensive still. But it is the rapid spread of access to e-mail that has turned the tables for arts marketers, and reduced the cost of making direct contact with customers to a fraction of what was formerly possible. While sophisticated (and sometimes costly) e-flyers (explained later in this chapter) can be used, a lot can be achieved on tight budgets by arts organizations which are disciplined about collecting e-mail addresses.
Because some forms of direct marketing are expensive, pre-testing of the process and message can be valuable and cost-effective. For example, every part of a mailshot is capable of being experimented with. If you look closely at the next piece of direct mail you receive, you will notice that each item in the envelope will have a unique identifying code. This is because the chances are that each part of that mailing is being experimented with. Letter layout, size and position of suggested price points on the order form, even the colour of the ink, are all variables which can be tested to see which pulls the greatest response. As a result, the creative principles which underlie the following advice about creating and writing a mailshot are actually tested against experience.
The variables in an arts campaign may not be as extensive or as sophisticated as in commercial marketing, but much can be learned from experimentation. For example, printed material can be coded uniquely at very little extra cost by the printer in order to identify response on booking forms from various outlets or mailing activities. Or two different sorts of covering letter can accompany a mailed brochure in a ‘split’ mailing, and the resulting responses compared. The most important marketing experience you can obtain is that of your own customers.