The data giving marketers new insight into direct mail

There’s a way to uncover the latest data to help you find out how your mail campaign can perform. Royal Mail MarketReach has developed a new, improved Insight Engine based on data from JICMail – the direct mail industry’s new audience measurement standard. It’s a powerful tool that can help you drive success.

JICMail is changing the face of marketing. As you may be aware, since its launch in January, JICMail – the Joint Industry Committee for Mail – provides advertisers and their agencies with insight and metrics on their channels, so they can have a better understanding of mail.

The data, captured by global research agency Kantar TNS, uses a diary that follows each piece of mail over four weeks across a nationally representative sample of 1,000 UK households. The results were used to create a unique interactive tool to help people understand the impact of mail when considering carrying out a mail campaign.

See and influence the results you can expect, before your next campaign has landed.

The results are often enlightening and reveal the real impact of mail on customers. Not only that, for the first time marketers can use our new Insight Engine to truly benchmark their mail investments against other media.

Audience and performance insights

The new Insight Engine has the capability to focus in on specific sector insights in industries as diverse as automotive, travel, insurance, retail and utilities. Here are just some of the metrics you can use it to uncover:

• People reached – the average number of new or existing customers who saw each item of mail
• Times viewed – the frequency with which each item of mail was looked at
• Days spent in the home – the average number of days each item of mail was kept in the home

You can also view your target audience and see the actions they take on receiving mail. Such as going online to discover more, visiting a store or contacting the sender. When you consider that 70% of consumers have responded digitally as a direct result of receiving mail, according to Kantar TNS research, it’s clear to see how powerful these actions can be.

Now you can see the results you could expect from including mail in the marketing mix:

• See the expected commercial actions per type of mail to help determine your marketing plan.
• Discover the types of mail, from addressed mail to door drops, that work hardest for your sector.
• See how a specific audience interacts with mail – for audiences from millennials to ABC1 professionals – to help you target the most profitable consumers for your brand in a way that really hits home.

All of which can help you hone your marketing plans and feel more confident you’ll implement them succesfully.

The new Insight Engine is particularly timely. In a world that often thinks digital-first, yet is becoming increasingly aware of potential pitfalls, it proves that mail is a solid choice. Mail is opened, kept and shared by real people. In fact, mail is the most reliable form of contact for reaching people in their homes – a safe haven for your brand.

Mail is especially strong when you consider that, in a world of fake clicks, 87% of people consider mail believable according to our research. It’s a great way to open a conversation. Seventy percent of consumers respond digitally to mail and mail sent to the home is typically shared with 200 more people for every 1,000 mail packs sent. The data and insights you discover using our Insight Engine will help you incorporate mail to best effect within your own marketing mix.

Increase the effectiveness of your next campaign – use our new, free Insight Engine to uncover personalised, downloadable insights. Simply visit our Insight Engine and, with the data it reveals, discover how mail can perform – before you’ve actually sent anything.

Try the Insight Engine here. The Royal Mail MarketReach team are also on-hand to provide further insights and planning expertise. Call our dedicated team free on 0800 177 7209.

Jonathan Harman is managing director of Royal Mail MarketReach.