October 15, 2024
Turn your campaign performance data into a roadmap for the future
Win or lose: Your campaign success isn’t determined only by your ballot outcome.
With the 2024 election cycle in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to analyze your campaign performance metrics. Why? Armed with detailed post-campaign data, you can identify significant opportunities to better tailor, target, and time your communication efforts and elevate your results in the next election cycle.
The risk:
Not understanding the root causes of why specific engagement tactics didn’t work can lead to repeating the same mistakes, ultimately impacting the effectiveness and efficiency of future campaigns.
The reward:
Knowing your metrics, like response rates and vanity clicks for your direct mail campaigns, gives you a more accurate picture of what tactics performed best. It can also inform you as to which channels delivered the most return on ad spend (ROAS) as voters engaged with your campaign across the journey.
Post-campaign analysis
The best metrics to determine your success will depend on the goal of your campaign. Here are some examples:
Campaign goal:
Drive voters to a website.
Action:
Analyze web engagement, including what content they interacted with most on your site.
Campaign goal:
Share a digital resource.
Action:
Look at how many downloads it received.
Campaign goal:
Generate voter leads.
Action:
Determine which lists/sources were most successful in generating those leads.
To effectively refine your messaging for success in future communications, a detailed analysis of both channel performance and audience engagement is crucial.
Channel performance.
Evaluating which channels performed best not only helps validate your success on an individual channel basis, it can also help optimize your omni-channel strategy by defining which ones worked best together.
Types of data to look at include:
Direct mail click-through rates (from a QR Code® or URL included in your mail piece).
Email lead generation numbers.
Clicks/impressions from paid display ads.
Increased mentions and tags across your social platforms.
Business reply-card data from voters who signed-up for additional campaign info.
Tip:
Every day, the mail processing network produces an abundance of valuable data that can be optimized to deliver actionable insights for your campaign. This data can be accessed through innovative mail technologies like USPS® Informed Delivery.
With Informed Delivery® interactive direct mail campaigns, you’ll get key data insights into how your campaigns performed, including the:
- Number and percentage of click-throughs.
- Number and percentage of Informed Delivery emails opened.
- Number of mail pieces sent to Informed Delivery households.
To learn more about getting data from Informed Delivery interactive mail campaigns, visit https://www.deliverthewin.com/informed-delivery-interactive-campaigns/
Audience engagement.
Post-campaign metrics can help you understand the diverse needs of your constituents in more depth to maximize your future success. This data allows you to create more personalized communications that resonate. It also can help validate whether your media mix/spend was allocated to the right target audience and determine if there are different audiences you should be prioritizing spend based on engagement.
You can learn more about your voter audience by analyzing:
Information from an opt-in form that voters completed by scanning a QR Code® printed on your direct mail piece.
Who interacted with your campaign social profiles by clicking a paid social post.
Which supporters signed up to volunteer and/or donate funds through a campaign email they received.
Tip:
Low audience engagement scores can provide important insights as well. Were there specific audiences that didn’t engage with your campaign as much as you thought they would? This reveals an opportunity to rethink how you engage those voter groups.
Digging deeper with advanced analytics.
While it does require some financial investment, using a marketing automation or customer relationship management (CRM) platform can give your campaign a more centralized view into relevant direct mail performance analytics, making ROAS measurement easier and more accurate. It also enables the following strategies:
Voter Life Cycle Management:
Monitor how voters engage with your direct mail throughout the campaign lifecycle. By tracking responses, such as a returned survey or event attendance from a mail invite, you can adjust your strategy to improve voter retention and loyalty.
Segmentation and Micro-targeting:
Use detailed voter segments to create personalized direct mail pieces. For example, you can send different mailings to first-time voters, frequent voters, or those with specific issue interests, ensuring that each group receives relevant content.
Engagement Scoring:
Assign engagement scores to voters based on their interactions with the campaign and focus your direct mail efforts on those with higher scores. This approach helps allocate resources effectively by prioritizing voters who are more likely to be influenced by direct mail.
Considering the size of your campaign and budget can help determine what your best option is.
Federal and state political campaigns:
For those who already have a marketing automation platform in place or are considering one, direct mail can be easily integrated into your platform. If you’re using a printing partner, you can also request that they provide analytics around direct mail campaign performance.
Local and down ballot campaigns:
Less costly options include starting with a semi-automated platform or using a service provider with marketing platform capabilities to provide campaign metrics.
Tip:
Integrating direct mail into a marketing automation platform enables you to set up triggers that automatically send a personalized mail piece to a voter based on their interaction with your campaign website or social media page.
Bottom line.
Analyzing your campaign performance, regardless of the outcome, presents a huge opportunity to identify areas that need improvement, so you’re better prepared to execute successful strategies for future election cycles that can help you deliver the win.
Elevate your campaign’s media mix.
Schedule a free consultation to uncover more ways to analyze and maximize your campaign efforts with direct mail.
