Measuring a mail campaign by what it produced, not what it cost to send

Most campaign reports start with the drop: how many pieces, which list, what each one cost. That's the easy half. The useful half starts when the mail lands and people either do something or don't.

This desk covers the plumbing that connects those two halves. We write about setting a goal before the design is final, picking the one or two numbers that will decide whether a campaign gets repeated, and building a funnel that separates responses from leads, leads from qualified leads, and qualified leads from paying customers.

We also cover holdout groups, matchback analysis and measurement windows, because the same campaign judged at day 10 and at day 60 can look like two different results. A law firm, a dental office in Conway and a national retailer measure differently, and we try to say which advice fits which.

What you won't find here is a universal response-rate benchmark with no source, sample or date attached. If a number appears, its origin appears next to it.