Brand owners’ customer acquisition strategies are benefitting from major increases in response rates and ROI for both cold direct mail and door-drops amid claims that digital has yet to tackle issues around measurement, transparency and creativity.
The figures, from the Jicmail Response Rate Tracker, are based on aggregated anonymous campaign level data gathered from 3,800 campaigns by 15 different organisations, spanning sell-side businesses, agencies, data and technology partners
Designed to complement Jicmail’s ongoing panel measurement of consumer mail engagement, the Response Rate Tracker provides response, return on investment, cost per acquisition, and average order value benchmarks for use in campaign target-setting and measurement.
The Response Rate Tracker provides marketers with a vital tool for contextualising their own campaign performance, with top level benchmarks revealing that warm direct mail achieves an average response rate of 7.2% and an ROI of £9.00; cold direct mail generates a 0.9% response rate and ROI of £3.20; and door drops achieve a 0.5% response rate and ROI of £2.90
While reaching existing customers through warm direct mail might achieve a higher ROI, Jicmail points out that few businesses grow without expanding their customer base and both cold direct mail (up 24% year on year) and door drops (up 39%) have been increasingly effective at helping organisations do this over the past 12 months.
While the mail channel offers a range of audience and geo-targeted solutions for advertisers looking for more precision with their media spend, the value of scale and frequency-of-send plays a significant part.
In fact, cold direct mail ROI increases with campaign volume. With a send volume of up to 25,000 items, an average ROI of £2.50 is seen. At 100,000 items or more, ROI increases to £3.60.
The power of message reinforcement is also evident when noting that repeat cold mail achieves a 37% higher ROI and 2.5 times higher response rates than new campaigns, along with greater average order values and lower CPAs.
Elsewhere, Jicmail says marketers looking to boost response rates should note the effect of mail campaigns with a dual response and brand objective – campaigns which are aiming to not only boost sales, but to also raise brand awareness and reinforce brand values, for example. Dual objective brand and response campaign typically achieve three times the response rate of response-only campaigns.
Benchmarks are now available across 35 sectors and product categories, including the retail/online retail, mail order, finance, charities, telecoms, travel, property and medical sectors.
In addition to the 13 contributing organisations from 2024 – Ginger Black Analytics, Epsilon, DBS Data, Join The Dots, Sagacity, The Letterbox Consultancy, Whistl, PaperPlanes, Conexance Choreograph, PSE, The Specialist Works, Go Inspire and Herdify – two new participants have contributed data to the Response Rate Tracker this year: Go Direct Marketing and PDV Agency.
Jicmail director of data leadership and learning Ian Gibbs said: “Prospecting for new customers is vital to the future success of businesses, yet performance marketing as a discipline faces challenges in measurement, transparency and creativity.
“It is heartening therefore to see that the mail channel is bucking this trend with response rates growing at a healthy rate for cold direct mail and door drops alike. With the upcoming DUA (Data Usage & Access) Bill bringing greater clarity to businesses looking to employ a data-driven approach to customer acquisition, this set of Response Rate Tracker results are very timely for the mail channel.”
Jicmail engagement director Mark Cross added: “Thanks to this industry collaboration we are continuing to grow the evidence base that supports the case for mail as a ‘super touchpoint’ with some great new insights from this year’s tracker. Dual purpose brand and response comms works best, ROI improves with reach and with the brilliantly simple, but overlooked, insight of just repeat send to drive up response and ROI.”
Related stories
Mail proves its mettle as open rates hit all-time high
Direct mail to join cross-media measurement tool pilot
Mail the ‘most influential channel’ for British voters
Direct marketing glows as adspend is hit by big freeze
Mailshots drive major growth in omnichannel purchases
Mail attention, engagement and conversion soar in Q4
Be the first to comment on "Brands warm to cold mail and door drops as ROI soars"