Response Rate for blog post advertisement vs. mass email, direct mail

Any research being done on this?

[Don_Hoagie]

I'm trying to peddle one of my website's services to widget dealers in the area, and one of those services is that I will post a blog article on my site- a consumer-driven, unbiased site- promoting and describing a widget dealer's sales event. These widget dealers often go with direct mail or mass email approach, and I've been trying to gather a data table for comparison.

Now of course, the results on my site all depend on who and how many people come to my site, in addition to how well this "blog post ad" meshes with the content that my users expect to see. But, if anyone's done research or experienced results first-hand, I'd like to hear you chime in on the following:

1. How many people visited your site during the time that post was up?
2. How many viewers clicked through to the widget dealer after reading [OR] If the dealer widget logged incoming customers to the store, how many customers were logged off the ad?
3. What did you charge the widget dealer for your service, and given the answer for #2, what would then be your cost per lead?

My main dilemma is that I really don't have a clue as to what percentage of my users I can expect to take action on the ad. Again, surely it's very dependent upon the content and the site in question (and maybe that's the only way I'll get a reliable answer), but anyone who has some research stats on ROI for any of these kinds of campaigns would help my cause.

I've started up an example comparison to give you an idea of how I'm trying to push the service:

Direct Mail Campaign:
10,000 pieces
.75 cents per piece
$7,500 investment
1% response rate
--------------
ROI: 100 leads @ $75.00 per lead

Mass Email Campaign:
10,000 email recipients
.5 cents per piece
$500 investment
2% response rate
--------------
ROI: 200 leads @ $2.50 per lead

Blog Post Campaign:
10,000 readers (traffic number reached in 5 days)
$250/day for ad to run
$1,250 investment
5% response rate
--------------
ROI: 500 leads @ $2.50 per lead

[markwelch]

Your problem, as you state it, is that you don't have data. The obvious solution is to "get some data." The easiest way to do this is to contact your favorite widget dealer, and offer to run this program either for free, or on a performance basis (the merchant pays you $2 per lead generated, or $100 per widget order).

Ah, yes, there is a problem: how do you track which leads or sales were generated by your referral? That is the tricky part.

Another strategy to get data is to go look for affiliate programs in the widget industry. For example, check the EPC* rates for widger merchants at ShareASale and Commission Junction -- although these numbers are highly manipulated and actual results vary quite widely, they do provide a "data point" to consider.

*/ EPC refers to "earnings per 100 clicks"

[Don_Hoagie]

Good food for thought, thanks Mark.

Yeah, just going ahead with it would probably generate the most accurate results, but I was hoping to get some capital off the service from the get-go, which would go right back into the site as marketing dollars to try to generate more traffic. I didn't want to go into it underpowered and get underwhelming results. But alas, that might be the best answer.

[edited by: Don_Hoagie at 11:42 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2007]