When Henry Daglish left Arena Media to launch the media agency startup – Bountiful Cow – out of established parent agency The 7stars, he chose an impactful media channel to announce they were open for business.
He handwrote postcards to intermediaries and media owners. As he put it in a recent article: “It took yonks but as a ‘modern agency with traditional values’, writing by hand gives that personal touch that we’re after.”
Clearly, this is a man who knows a thing or two about effective media.
There is still a certain special something about receiving a piece of post, something that is valued by all of us – that personal touch.
In the recent Royal Mail MarketReach Mailmen campaign, Nigel Vaz, chief executve EMEA and APAC at Publicis.Sapient, a champion of digital solutions, observed that mail is the original personalised channel and praised it for its ability to cut through the noise in our cluttered media landscape.
The more personalised a piece of mail is, the more it makes people feel like a brand has put thought and effort into the communication. In fact our ‘Mail and Email’ research found that mail makes 57% of consumers feel more valued, while 55% think it leaves a better impression.
Daglish may also have noted the impact that mail has to creating memories, in our ‘Private Life of Mail’ research we carried out a neuroscience study, which showed the effect that mail has on the brain, we found that mail had a higher impact than email or TV on engagement, emotional intensity and long term memory encoding. This impact remained true across all age group, suggesting that the effects are biologically and culturally determined and therefore universal.
Henry Daglish understood the fundamental behavioural truth that receiving mail is something that makes the recipient feel that the sender has put in the extra effort to get to know them and that they care about them – and the science supports his gut feel. Mail is not only likely to maximise the ROI of a whole multi-channel campaign but it’s also likely to strengthen customer relationships and brand loyalty for life.
Emma Springham is head of marketing and channels at Royal Mail MarketReach
