News

 

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MAIL
STUDY FINDS DIRECT MAIL MAKES AN IMPRESSION
 

A recent study suggests that direct mail makes deeper and longer-lasting impressions on people’s brains than digital advertising.
The study was conducted jointly by research firm Millward Brown, Bangor University and the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail.
Researchers used neuroscience technology to see which areas of the brain became active when participants viewed the same marketing message as a physical piece of direct mail and digitally on a computer screen.
Their findings suggest “the brain is more emotionally engaged and is potentially reflecting more on a response” when viewing direct mail, says Graham Page, executive vice president of consumer neuroscience at Millward Brown. Also, because the brain saw mail as real, deeper memories were likely being created.
Direct mail hadn’t been the subject of any major neuroscience research until Royal Mail and Millward Brown teamed in 2009 to investigate its place in the evolving media landscape.
“We were keen to understand how direct mail would work within new emerging media,” says Mike West, head of data products at Royal Mail. At the same time, the organization wanted to be able to show businesses that were starting to switch to digital how the benefits compared with direct mail.
Page says the implication is clear — direct mail should still have a place in marketing strategies, even in the digital era.
“While there are huge benefits of taking advantage of virtual media, our research suggests that we shouldn’t be forgetting more physical media like direct mail,” says Page. “Physical, ‘real’ events like receiving direct mail add an element that virtual campaigns cannot.”
The original story is from “Deliver Magazine

Direct Marketing News 10/01/11
Don’t Count Out Direct Mail
By: Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO, Ogilvyone Worldwide

Like many of you, I hear people in marketing say things like "Direct mail is dead," "No smart marketer uses direct mail these days," and "I don't need direct mail anymore — I use email now."
They are wrong. Direct mail has many core strengths. For starters, it has huge scale. In the US, $56 billion is spent on direct mail and less than $40 billion is spent on search, display, email and mobile advertising combined.
Almost every household in the civilized world can be reached by mail. Maybe that's why every one of our top 20 clients uses direct mail in its marketing mix.
Direct mail has four massive strengths, which separate it from other media and make it valuable in a marketing recipe:
Endurance: Consistently, research and in-market results prove that printed messages like direct mail last longer than digital ones.
Millward Brown did an analysis using MRI technology that found, time and time again, print messages engaged the brain more deeply and more emotionally than digital ones. The marketplace concurs. Direct mail response rates are consistently two to three times higher than email response rates.
Acquisition: Direct mail has always been a great method to introduce products and acquire customers. One of the greatest acquisition marketing tools of all time is the "Quite Frankly" letter from American Express Co. We wrote this letter for Amex in the 1980s and it has helped the company acquire 100 million new card members around the world to date.
Do you know who uses direct mail to win new enterprise and SMB customers? None other than the digital powerhouse Google.
Impact: Direct mail has impact and importance. When people stop using direct mail for wedding invitations and send an email, then I will believe direct mail is dead. Until then, it conveys importance like no other medium.
When American Express launched its most prestigious product, The Centurion Card, they did it with mail. It was a big, important communication that brought the personal service offering to life. And it worked.
Sense: Direct mail is sensory in nature. You cannot feel a banner ad or smell an email. When IBM Corp. wanted to market its "infrastructure solutions," it used a 3-D mailing with a puzzle to let prospects experience the complexity of integrating the pieces.
Direct mail indeed has prodigious strengths, but it needs to shape up and establish new collaborations. Direct mail needs to stop competing against digital media and learn to leverage them. We must innovate with disciplined agility and purposeful innovation, built on core values and scalable platforms.
Do not count out direct mail. Use it for all its amazing strengths including scale, endurance, impact and importance, acquisition and sensory benefits. Evolve it and innovate around it with discipline and purpose.