Читать книгу Direct Mail in the Digital Age - Lin Grensing-Pophal - Страница 23

Objectives are the quantifiable element of your direct mail campaign. What, specifically, is it that you hope to achieve? The great benefit of direct mail being measurable has already been mentioned, but you don’t just measure your efforts after the campaign is over. You need to think about what it is you want to measure before the campaign begins. In short, what will success look like for you? How will you know if your campaign has been an effective one? The only way you can answer these questions is to establish specific objectives.

The key difference between goals and objectives is that goals provide a general direction but not enough specificity so that after the campaign is over, two independent people could say “Yes, we did it,” or “No, we didn’t.”

Consider the dental clinic’s goal in Table 1 of increasing new patients. Suppose the first day after the direct mail campaign goes out a new patient calls for an appointment. Does that mean the effort was a success? The goal has been met, after all. But no, of course it doesn’t. Objectives are designed to create specificity around goals. Good objectives are stated in such a way that after the campaign is over, two or more individuals looking at the results can say “Yes, we were a success” or “No, we didn’t achieve our objectives.” A great acronym that can help marketers develop effective objectives is SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound.