Industry Update On JIC Mail Findings

For years, mail has been the only mass media channel without an independent and industry standard audience measurement body which made it very difficult to measure ROI on mail campaigns, and almost impossible for mail to compete for marketing budget when measured against television, radio and newspapers. Until now that is. Earlier this year, JICMail (which stands for the Joint Industry Commission and is made up of both the advertisers using mail and the industry supplying the channel, including representatives from the DMA, IPA, ISBA, Royal Mail and Whistl) was launched to accurately provide the industry with gold standard metrics for advertising mail so that data on mail can be comparable with other media channels for both reach and frequency. The data is continuously collected from a panel of 1000 households who use an app to photograph every piece of mail that they receive and report on what they do with that mail over the following four weeks. The report after the initial 6 month’s data has been collected has made for interesting reading and has told us a lot of what we, as mail experts, already felt confident about but were unable to prove. For example;

• On average, 51% of all mail is read immediately – whether addressed or door drop – with a further 19% followed up on later
• In addition, each piece that enters the home is revisited 3.8 times on average across either format
• 21% of all addressed mail and door drop items go on to create commercial actions, for example prompting a purchase, visiting a website or going to a physical store

It’s early days, but at RNB Group we feel confident that the JICMail initiative is going to give marketeers the insight to prove that mail is still a highly viable media channel and well worth allocating budget to alongside other aspects of your cross-media campaigns. Talk to us today for more information on the JICMail findings or for how mail could help your business.