NEWS: Q3 2025 Results: Mail engagement grows plus JICMAIL introduces new sustainability measurement metrics

The Q3 2025 results reveal that while the mail channel has enjoyed another quarter of growing consumer engagement and response to Direct Mail, Door Drops and Business Mail, the proportion of mail being recycled has also hit an all-time high. At the same time, JICMAIL has released a new Carbon Footprint calculator to enable marketers to assess the environmental impact of their mail activity.

Q3 2025 has been another quarter of stand-out mail engagement, with the proportion of mail being shared in the home hitting a five-year high reading of 10.1%. Subsequently, mail item reach (i.e. the number of people in the household that mail has been shared with), has grown across all four key mail types. The average Direct Mail piece is shared with an additional fifteen people per hundred, and the Average Door Drop with an additional six people.

Business Mail has enjoyed a particularly successful Q3, with improvements noted across lifespan, attention and item reach, and a five-year high frequency reading of 4.97 interactions per item.

Improved mail engagement, and in particular frequency of interaction from which mail ad impressions are calculated, sends an important signal to marketers that the mail channel has the ability to deliver on the types of KPIs so vital for brand campaign planning. However, mail continued to assert its Super Touchpoint abilities by delivering full funnel effectiveness and appealing to performance and brand marketers alike in Q3. The amount of mail prompting purchases (half of which are transacted online) increased 7% year on year, while the amount driving website visits was up to 9.4% - now matching the record set during Q2 2020.

With consumers showing greater interest in marketing comms delivered by the mail channel, marketers have an increasing responsibility to measure the environmental impact of delivering mail in to households. Encouragingly, mail recycle rates (the % of discarded mail that is recycled rather than thrown away) now stands at 88%: the highest reading of this metric since tracking began in Q3 2023.

Mail recycling is only one component of the channel’s sustainability credentials however, and so JICMAIL has now added a Carbon Footprint Calculator to its suite of mail planning tools. By drawing on data from Carbon Quota – the experts in carbon footprint measurement – JICMAIL Discovery users can now enter detailed print specs across Direct Mail, Door Drops and Catalogues to provide a vital perspective on the total carbon footprint of mail campaigns, carbon emissions per mail item and carbon emissions per ad impression (all measured in kilograms/grams of CO2e).

Carbon Quota’s “cradle-to-the-grave” emission calculations encompass all areas of the mail supply chain, from the raw material used, to the manufacturing process, to the delivery and disposal of mail. The integration of carbon footprint data into JICMAIL Discovery echoes the inclusion of a Carbon Quota-driven carbon calculator on the Print Green website earlier this year – a calculator which has now integrated JICMAIL data to also report on carbon emissions per mail ad impression.

Key Mail Metrics are as follows:

Mail interactions captured by JICMAIL panellists take many forms and range from opening and reading mail, to passing it on to someone else, putting it in the usual place, putting aside to look at later or taking it out of home (amongst a list of many other actions). In addition, JICMAIL captures the industry category and advertiser details of almost every mail item in its 375,000 strong mail item database.

Ian Gibbs, JICMAIL, Director of Data Leadership and Learning, said “With the latest figures from AA and WARC telling us that ad spend in the mail channel has grown for four straight quarters, it has become even more important to measure the environmental impact of the channel. We hope marketers will use our carbon calculator data to target set, benchmark and optimise mail carbon emissions. Of paramount importance however is transparency in measurement – only by accurately assessing how mail contributes to overall targets can marketers expect to make sustainability-driven decisions with their marketing budgets.”   

Mark Cross, Engagement Director, JICMAIL added, “xxx” 

The supporting charts are now in JICMAIL Discovery.