A national health insurance payor noticed a steady decline in the response rates of a previously top-performing direct mail offer. They tried other options, but those underperformed as well. They knew they had to boost their response rates, and were interested in how Quad could help.

Accelerated Marketing Insights (AMI), a Quad-owned, pre-market, testing system, evaluates design, messaging and special/promotional offers to connect more effectively with consumers. As a result, new challenger creative resulting from the research has delivered an average of 7%-10% lift in response and has beaten controls 85% of the time, improving ROI. So, rather than have the client conduct direct mail tests over multiple campaigns and years, and wait for results to trickle in, Quad’s AMI achieves results in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.

For this national insurance payor, Quad used AMI to test a wide array of messages, formats and layouts, with a focus on testing:

  • Message strength and priority
  • Package design
  • Letter and envelope combinations based on design, content, color, CTA and more.

Findings were shared and the teams collaborated to figure out how best to deploy and test the results in market.

Fast-forward to Q1 2023. The new letter and envelope direct mail package ran, and it generated an astounding 22% lift in response over the previously unbeatable champion. It was tested again in Q2 and showed a 21% lift. The insurance payor was impressed with the results and plans to complete another mailing in Q4.