December 2023

Mail’s effectiveness at the sharp end of the multichannel purchase journey increases in Q3 2023

The latest quarterly results from JICMAIL reveal that 6% of mail (including Direct Mail, Business Mail, Partially Addressed Mail and Door Drops) prompted a purchase in Q3 2023, up from 5% a year ago. For the first time, JICMAIL can report that half of these purchases were made online while just over a third were made in-store.

JICMAIL - The Joint Industry Currency for Mail - has made a number of reporting changes in Q3 2023 that enable the marketers and planners to unpick the role and impact of mail with even greater granularity than before. The new variables include:

• Distinction between whether mail prompted a purchase in store, online, or by other means (i.e. telephone or by mail): 3% of mail prompted an online purchase in Q3, 2.2% an in store purchase, and 1.4% a purchase by other means, confirming mail's role in driving multichannel purchase fulfilment.
• The reporting of warm vs cold mail impact: 76% of Direct Mail is revealed to be targeted at existing customers (warm) and 24% at new prospects (cold). While warm mail generates higher reach, frequency, lifespan and attention than cold mail, the positive ROI of cold DM should not be forgotten as reported in JICMAIL's. Response Rate Tracker earlier this year.
• Other new variables include a greater granularity in financial services sector reporting (banks vs insurance vs other finance such as credit cards and pensions); the inclusion of QR codes as a content type tracked; and the additional of new digital commercial action related to whether mail prompted an app usage or download or the sending of an email.)
• These new variables are available for Q3 2023 data onwards and are accessible via JICMAIL's recently revamped data platform Discovery 3.0.
• In addition, in Q3 JICMAIL can reveal that panel sample sizes grew by 6% year on year, primarily boosted by an uptick in Business Mail volumes of 15%.
• Frequency of interaction with mail has grown year on year for Door Drops and Partially Addressed Mail; while Item reach (i.e. sharing in the home) has grown for Business Mail, Partially Addressed Mail and Door Drops.
• For the first time, JICMAIL has revealed share of attention figures which indicate that some of the largest senders of mail - e.g. Tesco, NHS and FarmFoods - are generating a disproportionately large share of attention - a metric of increasing importance to planners as they look to gain every advantage they can in boosting campaign effectiveness.
• Key mail metrics for Q3 2023 can be summarised as follows:

Source: JICMAIL Item Data Q3 2023 n=10,272 Direct Mail, Door Drop, Partially Addressed and Business Mail items

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 nearly 300,000 strong mail item database.

Ian Gibbs, JICMAIL, Director of Data Leadership and Learning, said "JICMAIL has been reporting on mail's ability to drive digital traffic from day one - a vital insight considering that in the world of last click attribution, much of mail's credit is being taken by other channels. However, for the first time, we can reveal that mail also drives online purchases. Mail should be part of a fully-integrated customer journey, with its impact on product discovery, customer experience and now purchase fulfilment across all channels, clear to see."

Mark Cross, Engagement Director of JICMAIL added, "We are the only JIC to provide attention metrics within its standard reporting metrics, giving users a rich picture across exposure, attention and commercial actions, revealing new insights and analytics at a market, category and brand level. I'd encourage every subscriber to dig into this landmark data to unlock new value for their businesses and clients." 

For more information on how you can access JICMAIL data and use it to plan more efficient and effective mail campaigns, please visit www.jicmail.org.uk