Cathleen Zapata, VP of Research and Customer Experience at Metrics Marketing Group

For today’s direct mail marketers there is little opportunity to grab customer attention and stand out from the crowd. The print cycle is long, and competition is fierce, thus optimizing your creative prior to launch is imperative. - Cathleen Zapata

Cleveland, OH December 09, 2011

Metrics Marketing Group, an analytics-driven database marketing and interactive services firm, recently debuted proprietary research conducted by in-house Research and Customer Experience experts that can help improve the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns. Metrics utilized MetricsLabSM, its state-of-the-art user research facility in Cleveland, Ohio, to conduct the study and reveal insights into how recipients interact with direct mail pieces.

In order to utilize Recipient Experience Testing to optimize direct mail campaigns, Metrics Marketing’s Research and Customer Experience team conducted a primary research study to identify opportunities, abandonment points and learn what users see (and what they don’t see) on 45 different direct mail pieces. From eye tracking and facial expressions to observing actual actions to receiving verbal feedback about the design, Recipient Experience Testing allows marketers to see firsthand how a direct mail piece can be improved.

The Recipient Experience Testing conducted by Metrics Marketing Group included direct mail pieces from industries such as financial insurance and insurance, retail, travel, communication and hospitality. Each direct mail piece was accompanied by aggregated heat maps, focus maps and key performance indicator (KPI) charts. Heat maps and focus maps highlight areas that recipients see while KPI charts display statistics for specific areas of interest. The Research and Customer Experience team used KPI’s to determine in what order areas are viewed, for how long and how often. From this research, Metrics Marketing was able to capture images and statistics that can help marketers determine how effective their direct mail campaign will be before implementation.

“For today’s direct mail marketers there is little opportunity to grab customer attention and stand out from the crowd. The print cycle is long, and competition is fierce, thus optimizing your creative prior to launch is imperative,” commented Cathleen Zapata, Vice President of Research & Customer Experience at Metrics Marketing. “This type of research provides marketers with real data to optimize their direct mail campaigns and ultimately improve conversions.”

Cathleen Zapata presented the high-level results of this study, including heat maps, focus maps and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) map examples during a webinar on December 1, 2011 “Study Results: Utilizing Eye Tracking to Improve Direct Mail.” The recorded webinar can be viewed by visiting the Metrics Marketing’s BrightTalk channel at http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/2099/37543.

About Metrics Marketing
Based in Cleveland, Metrics Marketing offers comprehensive analytics-driven database and interactive marketing services that include: automated/triggered marketing systems, marketing database development and hosting, email strategy and deployment, predictive modeling, segmentation analysis, search marketing, creative services, website design, development and hosting, eCommerce solutions, web usability, web analytics, user research, traditional market research and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy consulting. Metrics Marketing Group is a Precision Dialogue company and is located at 905 Corporate Way in Westlake, Ohio. Additional information can be found at http://www.metricsmarketing.com.

Media Contact:
Kelly Bowman
440.471.6166
kbowman(at)metricsmarketing(dot)com
twitter.com/MetricsMrktg

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