Have you ever wondered if it’s worth it to mail to the same list twice? Our client did, and here are the results we found:
Using an in-house list with a renewal offer to retain financial services, we initially mailed to a population of over 15k households with a direct mail package consisting of a letter, application and reply envelope into a #10 window envelope.
Initial response rates were over 6%, and the client was very happy.
About 2 weeks later we mailed to a portion of that same list with the exact same package, and conversion rates more than doubled to 14.93%!
This was an overall increase in response of 139.9%!
Here are the details:
| Mailing Effort | Mail Quantity | Conversions | Conversion Rate | Mailing Effort |
| 1st Effort | 15,059 | 937 | 6.22% | N/A |
| 2nd Effort | 4,301 | 642 | 14.93% | 139.90% |
The data clearly show that a second effort of direct mail has a very positive effect on ROI, not just because of the increase in response, but also because that you can often re-use the same list for no additional cost or at a discount, which essentially lowers your kit cost.
Direct mail is a persistent medium has to be handled by the recipient, as opposed to digital ads and emails that are considered ephemeral media, (meaning it is very short-lived) and literally disappears into the ether.
Our research has even shown mail pieces have been retained and responded to after more than 4 months!
An additional contributing factor was that there was also a renewal deadline, (the same on both packages), and the procrastinators realized that they had to act in order to maintain their services. Even if you’re particular offer doesn’t have a specific deadline, there are many things that can be done to create a sense of urgency.
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