Mail: The Super Touchpoint

Our report, “Mail: The Super Touchpoint”, highlights the latest evidence that the mail channel (including Direct Mail, Door Drops, Partially Addressed Mail and Business Mail) has Super Touchpoint planning strengths as a platform for attracting consumer attention, deepening customer relationships and igniting household conversations.

Launched at our Annual Conference at PwC, we consulted a cross-section of industry experts from a diverse set of agencies, advertisers, industry bodies and effectiveness experts (including Barclaycard, People’s Postcode Lottery, MGOMD, VML, System1 and the IPA) to explore both the current challenges faced in the world of multi-channel campaign planning, and mail’s role in the increasingly fragmented media landscape.

The roundtable of industry experts agreed that:

• Challenges related to low transparency in the digital supply chain, lack of big-platform inter-operability, declining creativity and ad saturation are amongst many issues that make touchpoints-based planning harder than ever.
• To enable more seamless and effective touchpoints based planning (i.e. planning decisions which transcend simple media channel selection and acknowledge that channel effectiveness is context, time, location, mind-set and need-state specific), marketers must strive to include Super Touchpoints in their plans as much as possible.
• A Super Touchpoint channel enables marketers to merge audience-first planning with a cut-through behavioural or creative insight, to deliver disproportionately effective outcomes for consumers and brands alike.
• A Super Touchpoint creates deeper emotional connections with consumers; delivers a stimulating sensory experience that attracts attention; provides advertisers with a platform for brand storytelling and/or inspires consumers to start a conversation.
• Any channel can be a Super Touchpoint. If it conforms to best practice measurement; has the tools available to create a genuine and surprising customer insight; and has the potential to drive impact at all stages of the purchase cycle then it should encourage marketers to think about a disproportionately large investment to drive disproportionately effective outcomes.

JICMAIL’s report provides the tools and frameworks to evaluate channels using a STEP rating (Super Touchpoints Evaluation Points) and recommends that planners iterate on this approach and tailor it to their specific needs.

While any channel has the potential to be a Super Touchpoint, in the same report, JICMAIL has used this opportunity to take a fresh look at data compiled from eight years of mail measurement on its panel of 1,100 UK households. Combined with campaign level data benchmarks from its Response Rate Tracker, plus re-booted mail circulation data published by Nielsen the case for mail’s role as a Super Touchpoint channel is compelling:

Mail attracts consumer attention: each year, mail is engaged with by consumers for the equivalent of 10,000 years. Attention is strongly linked to commercial outcomes and in last full calendar year tracked by JICMAIL, the proportion of mail prompting a purchase has increased by 35% to 8.4% of mail items overall.

Mail is found to be disproportionately effective for some of the largest brand advertisers in the UK, although the effectiveness of the channel for smaller businesses continues to grow: 10.7% of Door Drop from local tradespeople results in a commercial outcome from the advertiser.

Mail deepens customer relationships. The ROI of direct mail in the retail sector targeted at existing customers increased by 32% to £7.80 in the last full calendar year tracked.

The advent of programmatic mail enables the mail channel to fulfil the same role as many digital activation channels by triggering the delivery of a mailer designed to encourage transactions to take place amongst customers who have abandoned their shopping carts halfway through the purchase process. A potential ceiling of £304k is available to the average advertiser through abandoned shopper carts.

Mail ignites household conversations. As a trusted channel that it is privacy-centric, brand conversations prompted by mail are growing. In 2024 (Q1-Q3) 17.5% of mail prompted a conversation- up from 15.8% two years prior.

Mail’s Super Touchpoint strengths lie in its ability to have impact throughout the purchase journey, with formats and solutions available at each stage of the traditional planning loop:

Mail’s Super Touchpoint Strengths

Furthermore, the “Mail: The Super Touchpoint” report from JICMAIL builds out the channel’s credentials as a highly measurable and transparent channel for marketers with the launch of JICMAIL+.

JICMAIL+ enables advertisers to seed the JICMAIL panel with different versions of their campaign creative to report on the key JICMAIL metrics of reach, frequency, lifespan, attention and commercial impact at a campaign level. Combined with creative, audience and attribution insights, marketers have more tools than ever to measure and optimise mail campaign performance.