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Generate 500 leads.

      • Add 2,000 names to the e-letter mailing list.

      Which ones do you feel are good objectives? Actually, this is a trick question. While each of the above statements are specific, they are not yet effective objectives. Each of the statements could still be more specific. Again, think in terms of what might happen after the campaign as you and another member of your team — or your boss — sit down to discuss results. Let’s reconsider these statements:

      • Increase sales by 15 percent. Sales of what? All products? Specific products?

      • Generate 500 leads. Any leads? Leads from a certain geographic area? Among a certain target demographic group?

      • Add 2,000 names. What kind of names? Any names? Your Facebook friends’ names or names of specific individuals with a specific level of buying power or potential?

      Being as specific as possible gives you a good direction for developing your direct mail effort — it helps you to focus. It also helps to avoid misunderstanding and potential conflict later should you find that your expectations are different than others’ expectations about the campaign.

      Being specific is just the first step in developing effective objectives. There are other criteria that you need to consider, so read on to find out more.

      3.2 Objectives must be measurable

      There needs to be a way for you to determine at the end of the campaign whether or not you achieved success. For instance, “Increase repeat purchases from existing customers by 15 percent,” is an objective that can be measured. “Create a high-impact direct mail campaign” is an example of an objective that is not currently stated in a measurable way. What is “high impact”? Who will judge whether or not the campaign is high impact? How will you quantify the evaluation?

      The key here is to ask yourself: “Based on this statement, how will I measure whether or not the objective has been achieved?” If you can’t come up with an answer, you don’t have a measurable objective.

      In addition to the question of whether or not it can be measured, marketers need to consider the ease or cost of measuring the desired results. In direct mail this is generally very straightforward — you can measure the number of responses, number of sales, etc. An objective related to raising awareness, though, might be more difficult and costly to measure. You would need to establish some form of baseline level of awareness among your target audience (perhaps through a survey), conduct the direct mail effort, and then remeasure awareness to see if there has been a change in the level of awareness.

      Having to establish new processes or dedicate additional staff to measure whether or not you’re achieving your objectives needs to be carefully considered to determine whether the knowledge gained will be worth the investment of time. Again, direct mail marketing efforts, unlike other forms of marketing, tend to readily lend themselves to cost-effective measurement.

      3.3 Objectives must be attainable

      Your objectives should represent attainable outcomes — results that you can reasonably expect to achieve. Consider how this might work on a personal level. A 120-pound woman would not set an objective of losing 50 pounds. That is not an attainable or realistic objective. She might, however, set a goal of losing 10 pounds.

      The decision of whether or not an objective represents an attainable outcome can be a judgment call. In fact, often the “A” in the SMART acronym is said to stand for “agreed-upon,” which is another important consideration. Your company leaders, project team, and any others with a stake in the outcome of your efforts need to agree upon the objectives you establish. That agreement will generally revolve around whether the objective is deemed to be attainable. In reaching agreement on objectives it is important to also consider the resources required to achieve the objective. A significant increase in sales, for example, might require the production of more products, put extra demand on shipping and customer service staff, and perhaps cause an increase in product returns.

      3.4 Objectives must be realistic/relevant

      Objectives are designed to support the goals that have been established. Therefore, objectives need to be aligned with or directly connected to those goals. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

      • Goal: To expand market share.

      • Objective: Increase the number of repeat buyers of Product X by 25 percent.

      In this case, the objective does not support the goal. The goal is about new customers and the objective talks about existing customers. An objective that would be aligned, or relevant, in this case might be: Increase the number of new buyers in the XYZ market area by 25 percent. That is an objective that would serve to meet the goal of expanding market share.

      3.5 Objectives must be time bound

      One element that all of the previous examples are missing — and it’s an important element — is a time frame. “Time bound” simply means that there needs to be some indication of when the objective is expected to be achieved. By what date or during what time frame? If you start your objective as: “Increase the number of repeat buyers of Product X by 25 percent,” but don’t indicate when that objective should be achieved, at the end of the year when you examine the results and they are only at 20 percent, a team member or the marketing manager could legitimately say, “I was thinking we’d do this by the end of next year!”

      Well-developed objectives help you keep your team on track in terms of what the intended outcomes are, so that at the end of the time line you’ve established, two or more independent observers can say “Yes, we did” or “No, we didn’t” achieve this objective.

      3.6 Evaluating your objectives

      In addition to reviewing each objective and holding it up to the SMART criteria, you should also consider the overall objectives that you’ve established under each of your goals and ask the following questions:

      • Will these objectives be sufficient to achieve the identified goal (or goals)?

      • Do we have the resources we’ll need to accomplish the objectives?

      • Are the time frames we’ve established appropriate for achieving the stated objectives?

      4. The Importance of Objectives

      We’ve already talked about the importance of well-developed direct mail objectives in terms of allowing you to determine whether or not you’ve achieved success and to ensure that two or more independent observers can reach the same conclusion based on the way the objectives have been stated. That is very important.

      Equally if not more important is the role that objectives play in helping to provide a framework or point of reference for all the planning activities and steps that will be undertaken to develop and implement your direct mail campaign. Your objectives will serve as a guide or checkpoint as you create your offer, select lists, develop copy and design, and deploy your campaign. At each point along the way you should ask:

      • Does this activity or decision support our stated objective?

      • Is this activity or decision likely to help us achieve our stated objective?

      If the answers are “no,” the activity should be modified or the decision changed.

      Once you have your goals and objectives established, the next step in developing your direct mail campaign is to consider your target audience or audiences. As you’ll see, the more specific and precise you can be about your target audience, the better you’ll be able to make effective list choices (a critical part of direct mail marketing) and create communications aimed at achieving the results you want.

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