Would you blindly spend marketing dollars on prospects that may or may not be interested in your dental services? Of course not. But many dentists continue to do it. Why? They don't track their marketing.
If you aren't tracking the results of your marketing pieces, you are wasting your money! Tracking shows you what messages, offers and mailing lists are working and it allows you to tweak your campaigns to get the best response!
There are 4 excellent ways to track your direct mail postcard campaign (and other marketing), neglect them at your own peril!
1. Your receptionist
Make sure your receptionist's new favorite phrase is, "So how did you hear about our practice?" Ask this to every new patient who calls in - without fail. This will tell you where your new patients are coming from. Keep a list of the responses so you can track your most effective forms of promotion, and maximize your ROI (Return On Investment)!
2. Postcard codes
So now you're tracking where your patients are coming from, but what if you mailed three different postcard designs over the last few months? When callers say, "I got your postcard" - it won't accurately tell you which design is working. So what do you do?
Put a tracking code on your postcards that distinguishes each campaign. When your receptionist finds out they heard about you from a postcard, she simply asks for the code printed on the card and you will know which postcard they received. Then determine which the most effective design is and optimize your mailings by sticking with it!
3. A unique telephone number
For an easier, error-free way to track your calls, you can purchase a unique phone number for each mailing. You will have quick, easy access to how many people respond to that phone number.
4. A landing page
If you are driving traffic to your website (and you should be!), the most effective way to track your responses is to direct postcard recipients to a custom landing page (a specific web page that your prospects go to that contains the same message as your postcard campaign). This allows you to easily give them the information you want them to see. But more importantly, you can track who is responding to your postcard campaign through the site.
These tracking tools are all you need to ensure the success of your dental marketing campaigns. But you have to actually use them to see results of what's working and what isn't. Once you put a tracking system in place, you can get the most out of your marketing dollars!
Author Resource:
Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998 with a phone, computer and no capital investment. PostcardMania is one of the nation's most effective postcard marketing companies specializing in lead generation for small to large-sized practices. They have been featured on the Inc. 500 and 5,000 lists and offer complete direct mail marketing campaigns with graphic design, printing, mailing list acquisition, mailing services, website development and email marketing services — all while continuing to educate clients with free marketing advice.
Need a way to bring in more patients? Check out how with our FREE dental marketing reports .
Need help setting up a tracking system on your marketing campaigns? Call one of my marketing consultants at 1-800-628-1804, and they'll walk you through the process! For more FREE marketing articles, visit www.postcardmaniadental.com .
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