I have started reaping the benefits of the direct mail postcards (full color glossy, heavy card stock) I sent out with 2 offers on them. A new feature pizza . . . BBQ chicken with onion, bacon, diced chicken and BBQ sauce added to cheese pizza . . . plus a meal bundle for 2 and for 4 people.
I have kept the numbers as to how many coupons are redeemed and the totals for those offers. It has only been Saturday since Noah and his ark showed up in the streets Friday night.
My question is regarding estimating the value of the offer/project and $$$ return on the cards. Do I just add up all the tickets that include a coupon and total to get a $$$ impact of the deal? How do I know if these are orders I would have gotten anyway, just some other item? Do I even care about the last one?
This is the 1st time I am trying to track specifically the value of the offers and ROI for the dollars on the mailing. I want to do it so it makes sense rather then WAG and not knowing better.
Edumacate me here. I am ignorant and need your sage experience.
Nick Im w/ u on this 1. Best week ever since Ive been here , mailed out 4800 postcards and only received 20. But, I had so many customers new come in talking about the postcard and return in days because they liked the food. I guest it has alot to do with perception also. Or Maybe a good reminder???
Sure, but the same questions carries . . . . what do I tell it to count, and how do I add up the $$$ impact of the promotion campaign? IS there anything I need to do to filter out what sales would already have been made by regulars without the coupon/offer?
Point of Success is great and all, but it won’t manage my marketing policies and tracking . . .plus ANALYZE the results. At least not out of the box. Someone will have to tell it what to do, and that is what I am trying to learn . . . how to analyze the Return on Investment of the project.
I’ll try the archives as well. Seems j_r0kk “The Invisible” had some good stuff along with some other people who had lots of experience with coupons and promos.
you’ll never tell the “exact” response from any adv campaign…some will bite @ the offer & some of those will be new…some will be reminded of your store & get something different…some will put it aside & return 2 you in months…
overall, judge your success by the redemption rate (1-2% is great) and track the overall sales increase for the next 6 weeks
You can track by Discount or by Product in Point Of Success. I have chosen the discount route. Program an discount for your cards then using the discount summary you can tell what your return is. If you chose the product route you can query product sales by customer.
No POS system can manage your promotions for you, but any good one can give you the information you need to analyze promotions and make decisions for future promotions.
You need this information from your POS system to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign:
Get the comparable day sales for a period prior to the campaign launch. This can tell you if you had a revenue uplift for the campaign days. A revenue increase could be attributed primarily to the campaign unless you had some other activity going on that would affect sales in the comparison period or the promo period. The Point of Success Flash Report is a good tool for getting this information as it will give you daily sales information for any period.
Track the promotion with a discount code so you can see the coupon redemptions. The Marketing and Advertising Analysis report will give you the redemption information for the promotion.
Use the “How did they find us” field on the customer information screen. Set up the coupon promotion as a referral type in the Point of Success tools center and select it from a list when entering a customer. New customers as a result of the promotion will be listed on the Customer Source Analysis report under the referral type you set up.
Do you know the food cost for the items in the promotion? This information is vital to be able to understand if the sales you made from the promotion were profitable. Keep in mind that it is not a requirement for a promotion to be profitable from the sales alone, but profitability should be a goal. Sometimes you’re buying new customers with a very aggressive discount. Future promotions into that new customer database can make the offer profitable in the long run.
What I do is 1st make sure your staff understands the importance of properly coding the orders, if you don’t have a POS system yet that won’t matter as much I guess.
OK, I take total dollars received, subtract total discounts given, subtract our overall monthly cog, & subtract cost of postcards & postage, which then (in theory) gives me net profit on promotion.
Something like this…
$1500(sales) -$300 (total discounts) -$480 (32% cog) -$360 (cost of promo) = $360 net profit
Some guys arguee thats not true cause you have labor & all your other fixed costs, blah, blah, blah…
But if you look at it this way…If I am breaking even with my total sales for the month & then you put this promo into action all of you initial expenses are covered by your “normal business” thus you are breaking even. So, every new guest you get off the postcard promo is putting a greater % to the bottom line. Additionally, don’t forget about return visits, each new guest may potentially be worth $500-$1000 in annual sales, if they continue doing business with you.
Also, if the above promo was based on 1000 postcards and 50 returned. Next month I’d send 2500 & expect 125 to return.
Finally, don’t worry about…whould they come in without the postcard being mailed?? Because some would have & some wouldn’t have…all in all this promo was a success! Oh ya the bottom line…my sales have increased every month over L/Y since I’ve been doing the direct mail postcards (and every postcard goes to our EXISTING customers, not unknowns).
PS I just plug this info into an excel sheet.
Hope this helps!
-Doug
Everyone was lots of help. Keep adding info in case you have new ideas and input. I appreciate everyone helping me wade through this first promo.
Everyone is remarking just how impressive these new, full color, glossy cards are real attention getters. I cannot recommend them enough! We always go through the Post Office Mail to get an idea how many people are dumping our stuff right out of hand . . . from post office boxes (about (300 in city). We found a total of 12 cards checking each of three consecutive days. That’s 12 total. Sure, we get to resend these to another address . . . but we usually get around 20 to 30 of our direct mailed newsletters dropped in the trash. Another indicator of success of impression-making.