Over the last 18 months, Royal Mail MarketReach has conducted a series of research projects to understand exactly what that means for consumers, and what it means
for you.
We’ve looked into consumers’ homes and found that mail lives a rich, complex and surprisingly long life beyond the doormat. We’ve looked into their hearts and uncovered the deep emotional responses that are triggered by sensations of touch.
And we’ve literally looked into their heads, using the latest neuroscience techniques to discover that mail has a profound and direct impact on the brain.
It’s an unprecedented look at what happens after mail enters the home, which is why we’ve called it, The Private Life of Mail.
2. Mail’s share of total advertising revenue declining
No industry visibility of the medium
Perception of being boring and analogue
No real understanding of how mail actually works
LIFE IN EARLY 2013
2
3. 3
HOW WE WENT ABOUT ADDRESSING
18 months of investigation
Significant investment
8 strands of research
THE PROBLEM
5. 8 STRANDS OF RESEARCH
5
Ethnographics
Ethno Quant
Neuroscience
Tactility
IPA Databank
BrandScience
Core Secondary
Mail & Digital 1
Mail & Digital 2
Values
Desk
Decode Sciencescan
TGI
IPA Touchpoints
6. 6
LIFE BEYOND THE LETTERBOX
PHASE ONE: ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
12 Households
Range of Life
Stages
7 days
Mail not
specifically
mentioned
(Media Moments)
Interviewer visits
- pre, during and
post
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Media Moments, Trinity McQueen, 2013
800+ hours of
CCTV footage
Motion sensitive
cameras
10. JACK & BECKI DISCUSS DOORDROPS
10Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Media Moments, Trinity McQueen, 2013
11. MAIL FLOWS THROUGH THE HOME
11
Challenges
the direct
media
assumption
of a singular
impact
Part of the
fabric of daily
life - multiple
impacts over
time
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Media Moments, Trinity McQueen, 2013
Holding Area
Pile
Display
12. 12
LIFE BEYOND THE LETTERBOX
PHASE TWO: QUANT SURVEY
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Ethnographic Quant, Trinity McQueen, 2014
1,129 adults
Nat Rep
Online
How the
respondent
had interacted
with their most
recent mail
delivery
What other
mail was still in
the home?
What had
happened to it?
13. MAIL IS INTERACTED WITH AND SHARED
13
22 mins per
day reading
mail(3)
23% of mail
within a
household is
shared(2)
48% of
commercial
mail is
interacted with
each day(1)
(1 & 2) = Royal Mail MarketReach, Ethnographic Quant, Trinity McQueen, 2014 (Interact = read, kept or acted on an item)
(3) = IPA Touchpoints 5, 2014 (Monday to Saturday reading)
14. MAIL IS DISPLAYED
14
39% of
people
display mail
in their
home
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Ethnographic Quant, Trinity McQueen, 2014
15. MAIL PERSISTS
15
Days within home
17Addressed advertising mail
38Unaddressed mail (door drops)
45Bills and statements
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Ethnographic Quant, Trinity McQueen, 2014
16. 16
WHAT PEOPLE SAY AND WHAT PEOPLE DO
ARE DIFFERENT
64%
Had opened a
piece of
advertising
mail that day
62%
Say they
reject all
advertising
mail
BUT
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Ethnographic Quant, Trinity McQueen, 2014
17. 17
NEUROSCIENCE
163 respondents
In home – small groups
Naïve to purpose of study
Owned and placed pieces of mail / email
Asked only to open the mail / emails they would open at home
STEADY STATE TOPOGRAPHY (SST)
Reading
Mail
Internet
browsing
& reading
emails
Television
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Neuro-Insight, 2013
18. 18
NEUROSCIENCE
STEADY STATE TOPOGRAPHY (SST)
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Neuro-Insight, 2013
Speed of response in the brain is measured -
not simply the amount of activity
19. KEY SST MEASURES
19Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Neuro-Insight, 2013
Engagement
The extent to which the
participant finds the
stimulus to be personally
relevant to them
Emotional
Intensity
How strongly the
participant feels about the
stimulus
This can be a positive or
negative sensation
Long Term
Memory
Encoding
(LTME)
The extent to which the
brain is storing the
information it’s getting from
the stimulus
A high score doesn’t
necessarily mean that the
stimulus is actively
retained in memory, but
similar subsequent stimuli
are likely to trigger
stronger recall
22. 22
EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH PERFORMANCE FOR
MAIL ON THE MEASURES THAT COUNT
Best
performance
recorded
across
studies
No
significant
differences
by age or
attitudes to
mail
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Neuro-Insight, 2013
24. 24
AND MAIL PRIMES SPECIFIC ASPECTS
OF TV ADS
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Neuro-Insight, 2013
More
strongly
stimulated at
specific (call
to action)
moments
Resonated
with the
messages
previously
read in the
mail
Seen First
Seen Last
25. 25
THE ACADEMIC BIT
PEOPLE PLACE VALUE ON THINGS THEY CAN TOUCH
Paper vs. Screen
Physical media
= better retention
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age – The
Science of Paper vs. Screen. Scientific
American, April 2013
Multisensory Learning
More senses
= faster absorption
Shams & Seitz
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008
Endowment Effect
Touch = Ownership = Value
Shu & Peck
Journal of Consumer Research, 2009
26. 26
TACTILITY RESEARCH
COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF PAPER
50
observational
interviews
12 biometric
lab interviews
Invented five
brands to
remove prior
associations
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Tactility, Trinity McQueen, 2013
27. WE INVENTED FIVE BRANDS
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Tactility, Trinity McQueen, 2013
28. 28
HANDLING PHYSICAL ITEMS CHANGES THE
WAY PEOPLE INSTINCTIVELY TALK
“I’d feel bad about
throwing this in the bin” “The information felt expensive”
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Tactility, Trinity McQueen, 2013
Tactile
effects
stimulated
emotions
Tactility
reduced the
cognitive
effort
Cognitive
Miser
29. 29
A WIDER RANGE OF WORDS
MORE EMOTIONAL – LESS FUNCTIONAL
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, Tactility, Trinity McQueen, 2013
Online Retail Travel Leisure
31. 31
IPA EFFECTIVENESS DATABANK ANALYSIS BY
416 client cases
Comparing those with mail (97) vs. without mail (319)
Controlled to ensure no bias:
Campaign duration
Relative budget size
Performance in winning creative awards
Category dynamics (growing, static, declining)
Pre-campaign market share
Looked at results for:
Sales
Acquisition
Market share growth – absolute and efficiency
Efficiency = how strongly Extra Share of Voice (ESOV) drives growth
MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS EXPERT PETER FIELD
32. 32
EFFICENT PERFORMANCE ON
KEY METRICS
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, IPA Meta-Analysis, Peter Field, 2013
Campaigns
with mail
delivered
market share
growth with 3x
the (ESOV)
efficiency
27% more
likely to
deliver top-
ranking sales
performance
40% more
likely to
deliver top-
ranking
acquisition
33. 33
ECONOMETRIC META-ANALYSIS OF
THE
401 cases - 56 used mail and 42 door drops
One years data per case – 3 campaigns on average
Update of our work done in 2010 – c.70% of cases 2010 onwards
Nine media types covered – mail, door drops, TV, print (combined
newspapers and magazines), out-of-home, radio, online display, search and
cinema
All of the mail / door drop cases except for two were multi-channel
Revenue ROI
Return over 3-6 months
Categories covered - telecommunications, financial services, retail, public
sector, media and leisure / entertainment
BRANDSCIENCE “RESULTS VAULT”
34. EVIDENCE OF ROI MEDIA MULTIPLIER
34
When mail was
included total
communications
ROI jumped
from £4.22 to
£4.73 – a 12%
increase
Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, BrandScience Meta-Analysis, 2014
35. MAIL AND DIGITAL
35
Part 1 (2013) Part 2 (2014)
Methodology Online quantitative survey
Sample size 1,000 2,375
Sample characteristics
covered
Demographics
Demographics
Digital behaviour (device
ownership, frequency of use)
Communications media
covered
Mail
Email
Mail
Email
Online Portal
Sectors covered Not sector specific
Finance, Retail, Mail Order,
Utilities, Telecoms
Response types covered
Emotional
Physical
Commercial
Emotional
Physical
Commercial
Digital (e.g. response via
social media/downloading app)
Mail types covered Advertising Specific to sector
36. 36
VALUES (V2C DRIVES V2B)
WHAT GOOD MAIL LOOKS LIKE AND ACHIEVES
Follow up in–
home interviews,
mail collection
and diary
keeping exercise
Focus groups x 6
Recruitment of
participants for
ongoing in-home
research
Quantitative
assessment on
preliminary
qualitative findings.
Omnibus
questions among
2,000
respondents
Final in-home
interview and
diary/ post
collection
Full quantitative
survey 3,000
respondents (sector
focus)
Confirmation of v2c
dynamics and the
longer term value of
mail.
Qualitative understanding of
the value of mail.
Quantitative verification
of v2c;
what drives v2c and
what destroys v2c
Mail that they had
recently
received… that
they found useful
and/or
interesting
• FS
• Retail
• Utilities/telecom
• Govt / Health
• Travel / Tourism
• Charities
37. 12 Ethnography households
14 focus groups
99 depth interviews
213 Neuroscience / biometric participants
401 BrandScience’s ‘Results Vault’ cases
416 IPA Effectiveness Databank cases
1,000+ academic articles reviewed
9,504 respondents across our telephone and online quantitative surveys
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MAIL
37
38. 38
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MAIL
Mail persists in the home
Mail drives strong emotional engagement
Mail triggers powerful brain responses
Mail primes other media
Mail delivers a strong return
I could reel off exactly how we did it, but instead I’m going to take the opportunity to illustrate the principle. What you’ve five brands, five DM pieces, at increasing levels of what you might call ‘tactile interest’. The changes we made are all things that can’t be replicated digitally – texture, paper weight, surface effects and so on. And hopefully you’re noticing how quickly you grasped that principle when you actually had the items to handle.