Direct Mail Testing With/WO Website

[Gary Parker]

Part of my marketing has been direct mail for about 18 months primarily to probate, inherited, and absentee owners. For the probate and inherited properties direct mail, has anyone tested mailing letters with and without a website listed on the letter? If anyone has, have you tested listing that web address in all the letters vs, for example, after 3 have been sent or some other combination?

[Blair Halver]

I guess I'll have to disagree here. And first of all, this is pertaining to mailing to Absentee Owners, not Probates as the OP asked about, but hopefully this helps.

Whether or not having the website on the card helps/hurts response rate, I don't have the records to support. But I can say that when I did put the website on the card, nobody responded via the website, and maybe just a couple people actually went to the website to check it out.

The ones who did go to the website, did not end up contacting me. My theory is that this is because they got enough info they wanted from the website, and didn't need to call me. So I didn't get to talk to them!

The direct mail piece's job is just to get them to call you. If you give them too much info up front, I believe it will decrease your actual response rate.

On top of that, I've found I get a better response rate when the mail piece looks like it comes from a PERSON, instead of a COMPANY. So if you put the website on there, you look like a company. If you leave it off and just put a phone number on there (a local phone number, not a toll-free, no extension), I've found an increase in response rate.

Hope this helps!