Mail is a ‘must-have’ channel on attention-based media plans

Mail is more attention efficient than many other media channels, according to a year-long study conducted by JICMAIL (The Joint Industry Currency for Mail). 

Why it matters

Attention is a hot topic right now among planners, so it makes sense for them to consider where mail fits into the picture – not least as The Time We Spend With Mail* report finds mail to be particularly efficient in terms of cost per minute while also driving commercial effectiveness.

Takeaways 

• The average direct mail item generates 108 seconds of attention across 28 days; business mail 150 seconds; partially addressed 64 seconds; and door drop 46 seconds.
• Mail attention is strongly linked to commercial effectiveness. There is a x2 to x3 multiplier for time spent with commercially effective direct mail items and a x3 to x5 multiplier for door drops. 
• Mail drives purchases, footfall, discussions and voucher redemptions, and the average mail item that prompts advertiser website visits, does so for five minutes a session on average.
• Location in the home and contextual relevance are key drivers of mail attention, with the living room and kitchen being particularly high-mail attention environments. Charity, medical and government mail is often found in the former, retail and restaurant mail in the latter. 
• Mail attention is generally a solitary activity and it is more attention efficient than virtually all other media channels. It costs just £0.07 to generate a minute of consumer attention with door drops and £0.11 for direct mail.

Key quote

“The journey of mail around the home accumulates unparalleled levels of largely solus time spent with mail, triggering multiple minutes across the marketing funnel and offers the prospect of a high attention effectiveness multiplier. Rewarding the time spent with mail is now a key planning metric” – Mark Cross, Engagement Director at JICMAIL.

*This involved full attention measurement across its entire panel of 1,000 households per month, with independent validation of both the panel findings (via video analytics) and the efficiency calculations generated, to compare time spent with mail to other media channels.

Sourced from JICMAIL