Measure Twice. Succeed Always. Part II

. . . continued from yesterday’s Measure Twice. Succeed Always.  Part I

Measuring e-mail results

E-mail is great for a couple of reasons: First, prospects are probably more likely to give you their e-mail address (in an open house guest book or on your website, for example) than their mailing address. Second, because with the right software or service (I love Constant Contact) e-mail is very easy to measure. When measuring, pay attention to:

• Open rate – the % of recipients that open your e-mail
• Click-through rate – the % of recipients who open your email and click on a link (to your website, for example)
• Conversion rate – the % of recipients who respond to your call-to-action (to download a free report or call for more information, for example)
• Unsubscribe rate – the number of people who click on the “unsubscribe” link in your e-mail (which is required by law)
• Bounce rate – the ratio of the number of undeliverable e-mails to the total number of e-mails sent. An e-mail could be undeliverable because the address is wrong or because the e-mail host system rejected it as spam, for example.
• Delivery rate – the ratio of the number of e-mails sent minus bounces to the total number of e-mails sent
• Referral rate – how many people, of all the e-mails you sent, forward your e-mail to another person

Measuring direct mail results

If you send direct mail that asks recipients to take a certain action, then you should measure your response rate – the number of people who take the action compared to the total number of mailers you sent. For example, if you send out 2,000 postcards asking recipients to sign up for a free market analysis and 50 people sign up then your response rate is 50/2000, or 2.5%. The response rate you can expect will depend on a lot of factors, including your address list, your message, the design of your mailer, and even such esoteric factors as what the outside of your envelope looks like and whether you include a P.S. (for letters). (Contact us for industry-beating results.)

You also want to be sure that you can separate the people responding to your direct mail piece from folks who are coming from somewhere else. If your direct mail asks recipients to sign up for a free market analysis, for example, set up a landing page (separate from your primary website), with a URL that you use only on that direct mail piece – visits to your landing page will then give you your number of responses. If you’re asking people to call, for example, make sure that you ask folks how they heard about you (that’s a good measurement practice in general).

Measure twice. Succeed always.

About two years ago my dad built a beautiful wood crib for his firstborn grandson, Miguel. Dad crafted it – painstakingly – over a period of several months, out of cherry wood. In the end, he said the wood alone cost $1,000. It’s an amazing heirloom we’ll treasure forever – and a great example of the importance of measuring before you cut. In marketing yourself as a real estate agent, remember the motto: “Measure twice. Succeed always.”

July 15, 2009

Molly Castelazo

Castelazo Marketing Ltd.

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www.cmrealestatemarketing.com

molly@cmrealestatemarketing.com

480-987-7958

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