DMA 2010 Response Rate Trend Report

The Direct Marketing Association released the 2010 Response Rate Trend Report. This report provides key cost and performance benchmarks to help marketers test their advertising and promotional campaigns.

Key Findings:

• Email to a house list averaged:  a 19.47% open rate; a 6.64% click-through rate; a 1.73% conversion rate; with a bounce-back rate of 3.72% and an unsubscribe rate of 0.77%.
• Direct Mail: Mailing services have held steady over the past four years.  Letter-sized envelopes, for instance, had a response rate this year of 3.42% for a house list and 1.38% for a prospect list.
• Catalogs had the lowest cost per lead/order of $47.61, just ahead of inserts at $47.69, email at $53.85, and postcards $75.32.
• Outbound telemarketing to prospects had the highest cost per order or lead of $309.25, but it also had the highest response rate from prospects of 6.16 percent.  The highest response rate for a house list was also telephone, at 10.41 percent.
• Paid search had an average cost per click of $3.79, with a 3.81% conversion rate. The conversion rate (after click) of internet display advertisements was slightly higher at 4.43%.
• B-to-B: Response rates were generally higher than for B-to-C campaigns.  Lead generation and high-end average sale campaigns also had higher response rates.
• Nearly 60% of direct mail campaigns in financial services aimed to produce a direct sale.  The average response rate was a comparatively low 2.66% to a house list and 1.01% to a prospect list.

Being able to track your marketing and sales is very important.  All too often companies run various sales efforts or mailing services campaign without knowing the true cost versus benefit. Something to consider is to track your direct marketing campaign with a unique phone number. They can be set up in 30 minutes or less and provide many details about where your sales leads were generated.