The only mail metric that matters

Ask a mail vendor how a campaign performed and you will get a response rate. Ask what a funded loan cost and the conversation changes shape, because almost nobody is measuring past the phone call.

Cost per piece is the cheapest number to improve and the least useful. You lower it by buying worse paper and a broader list, and both of those raise the number that actually matters.

The chain you have to measure

• Cost per piece. Trivially improvable, tells you almost nothing.
• Response rate. Necessary, but a good one can still lose money.
• Cost per call. Getting warmer, and where most vendors stop.
• Cost per funded loan. The one that decides whether to run it again.

Getting to the last one means an inbound call has to be tied to a specific piece, list and offer, and then followed through application, submission, lock and funding. That is a tracking problem, not a mail problem, which is why mail houses do not solve it.

How to actually lower it

Mail fewer households, better chosen. Put one clear offer and one obvious next step on the piece. Then make sure the phone gets answered, because the fastest way to ruin a good drop is to send more calls than the floor can take.