How can you track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Obviously, there are a plethora of ways to communicate with current and potential members, but it’s difficult to really know how successful one method is over another.

The answer is in response analysis, which was covered at the Technology Conference. Tracking responses to your marketing efforts is crucial to understanding where the value lies. For direct mail marketing efforts, many associations attach key codes to their mailers. When members go to the association’s website, they’re directed to enter the key code into a form, which then enables you (the association’s staff) to track where someone came from.

Then, after all is said and done, the association will need to match the codes to the origin to see which effort garnered the most results.

Marcia Williams, a direct response consultant, writes:

With so many possible response channels, performing a match back after any majormarketing campaign is imperative to your response analysis and your ability to marketsmarter. You will discover lists that you thought were good are not, and lists that youthought were duds are actually some of your best lists.

Even if your results aren’t too conclusive, always include a way to track to responses when marketing to members and potential members. Some data is better than none, and you’ll be able to set up benchmarking points as your responses grow.