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Are you running your direct mail campaigns at your estate agency blind? The reality is most agencies aren’t using, or tracking, the right data and metrics when it comes to campaign efficiency, effectively meaning they’re running direct mails blind.
Data is crucial to continuous campaign success, and data can be used to make ongoing improvements, change targeting or understand which messages are resonating best with your audience.
This blog explores the data to consider when targeting direct mail campaigns and data to capture after the campaign has run to set you up for continued success.
Not using data in your campaigns?
Misguided Targeting
If your data doesn't identify the right prospects, your campaigns could totally miss the mark, causing you to lose out on chances to connect and convert.
Now, leading agents use Spectre’s AI propensity to sell model that can analyse billions of data points to pinpoint the properties with the highest potential for becoming vendors.
By using advanced analytics and predictive modelling, you can hone in on your target audience better, lower the chance of missing important demographics and up your chances of reaching vendors who are more likely to take your desired action.
Financial Losses
Inaccurate data can lead to wasted spend and affect revenue performance.
Direct mail campaigns are a powerful tool for estate agents but they can be a considerable investment, if agents don’t put data at the forefront of their direct mail campaigns they will likely overspend and underdeliver.
Ensuring the data you're using is up to date and correct ensures that budgets are spent efficiently, maximising the impact of each campaign.
Missed Opportunities
When it comes to reaching new vendors through direct mail campaigns, it's vital to have accurate data to guide your decisions. Trusting bad or incomplete data could lead you to target the wrong vendors and ultimately, affect the success of your direct mail efforts.
It may also be a vendor’s first experience of your brand, and first impressions count. Using poor data can harm their view of your brand. Targeting a property not on the market with messaging around swapping agents would definitely set the wrong tone for your agency.
Correctly identifying vendors who match desired features of prospective buyers can have a huge impact on your prospecting. By filtering addresses by key features, such as large gardens or parking spaces, you can message prospective vendors with content such as “people want to buy your house!” to discover new opportunities for business growth and acquiring new vendors.
Data collection & analysis
Let’s assume using the AI techniques above, you have identified your target vendors and you’ve sent your direct mail campaign to them.
What should you track to ensure your campaigns are performing to your expectations?
Not paying attention to your performance data can skew your understanding of your direct mail campaign's performance. Some agents use systems that don’t clearly communicate how well their direct mail campaigns have performed, hindering their ability to optimise future campaigns for better results.
Key Metrics to Track
The most important things to track as an estate agent when sending direct mail campaigns are their successes. Focus on core pipeline and revenue metrics such as:
- Total Number of Instructions Won
- Total Listings Price Value
- Estimated Total Fee Value
These figures allow you to calculate your return on investment (ROI) from your direct mail campaigns. To calculate your estimated ROI from a campaign, subtract the cost of the direct mail campaign from the estimated total fee value, divide by the cost of the investment, and multiply by 100 to give a percentage.
However, you may not see ROI straight away, or you might be nurturing these vendors making it difficult to historically attribute success to your campaign.. Then what?
This doesn’t mean your direct mail campaigns haven’t had an impact. In Spectre reporting, we use a field called “impact level” which applies an impact signal to an address depending on the activity received. Here’s a breakdown of the different impact types:
- Influenced (Last 6 months): You’ll know if a success was influenced by direct mail, whenever an instruction occurs within 6 months after the last mailable was received.
- Contributed (6 - 12 months): You’ll know that your Spectre marketing has contributed to a success whenever an instruction occurs between 6-12 months after the last letter or postcard was received.
- Supported (12+ months): You’ll be able to identify any successes supported by Spectre whenever the instruction occurs 12 months or more.
These impact types allow agents to easily see how their direct mail campaigns performed over time and influenced their pipeline, building trust in your marketing activity and decision-making.
Aside from successes, agents using Spectre can also track the following:
- Properties Marketed To
- Letters Sent By Branch
- Postcards Sent By Branch
- Credits Used By Branch
- Competitors Marketed To
- Regular Letters Sent
Are you missing out on key data from your instruction generation tool?
Get in contact with one of our representatives and we will arrange a demo of Spectre for you.
