By Zoe Menendez, Digital Media Manager.
Recently, I was reviewing data from our clients who have been hosting dinner seminars. These clients have been spending most of their event budget on mailers and it got me wondering; Is this really the best use of their budget? Could they be doing better if they spent less on mailers and more on digital? Or is it the opposite and they should be spending less on digital and more on mailers?
Before we get into the numbers, I want to point out a couple of differences between digital ad leads (Facebook specifically) and mailer leads.
- Depending on what mail house provider you work with, you may only see the leads that are confirmed whereas with digital platforms, you’ll see all the leads that your ads produce.
- Digital ad performance will not be impacted as heavily by the upcoming election whereas mailers (especially in states with highly contested elections) will be very heavily impacted.
As discussed above, with digital leads you will see all the leads that come in, the good and the bad. And this leads many to think that digital leads are not good and will not help you fill your dinner seminar the way a mailer will. We are here to tell you that assumption is not correct and that with the correct targeting and ads, digital ads can produce quality leads that will help you fill your dinner event.
If you don’t believe me, then let’s take a look at some numbers that will help convince you…
We looked at dinner events for clients in three very competitive markets, Chicago, Scottsdale, and San Diego. First, when we looked at the pure cost-per-lead, we see that digital ads produce on average $22/lead versus mailers which produce an average CPL of $170. However, based on what we discussed earlier; a better comparison would be to compare cost-per-confirmed attendee. When we look at this metric, we see digital leads have an average of $79/attendee which is nearly $200 less than the $273 average for mailer leads.
Another myth regarding digital leads is that even when confirmed they don’t show up and an advisor ends up wasting money paying for meals for no-shows. Based on our numbers, we found that there was only a 1% difference in show rates with mailer leads showing up 93% of the time and digital leads showing up 92% of the time. Even if you took the worst-case scenario from our data, the lowest show rate we saw from digital leads was 74% and the lowest from mailer leads was 79%. With digital ads, we saw again an over $200 lower cost-per-attendee ($86 vs $294).
The final myth we often hear about digital leads is they are not quality leads and they don’t convert to appointments. From our deep dive, we found that the appointment rate for digital leads is 3% higher than mailer leads. 31% of the digital leads that attend an event ended up booking an appointment. Only 28% of mailer leads did the same. This leads to a substantially lower cost-per-appointment when you compare the two mediums, with the digital lead cost-per-appointment being over $750 less than mailers ($279 vs $1,037).
From these numbers, it’s clear that digital leads have an advantage over mailer leads when it comes to dinner seminars. And as we get closer to November and the elections, this data is going to become even more important to keep in mind. If you live somewhere with competitive elections, then your mailers are going to get lost in the large amount of election mail that will be hitting mailboxes, making it even more essential to invest in adding digital ad campaigns to your mix.
In no way are we saying that you should get rid of mailers altogether, even though we believe you could, and you’d still have a successful dinner event. In our opinion, the best scenario would be for you to take a balanced approach with equal spend across both mediums. In most cases, that would mean you should do a smaller mailer spend and add more to your digital budget.
The data shows the entire story, and, in this case, it shows that digital advertising is more than capable of producing quality leads who will show up and convert to appointments at a much lower cost when compared to mailers.
About the Author: Before Zoe came to us she worked with two well-known New England advertising agencies where she honed her skills at digital marketing serving both local and national accounts. She attended Johnson and Wales University where she won two national collegiate advertising titles and graduated with a BS, as well an MBA in Advertising and Marketing. Zoe is a native New Englander and grew up in New Hampshire, but happily for us left for the city life in Boston where she resides and is a proud mom to her cat, Winston.
