24 Mar 2025
By Greg Girard, Managing Director, CX Services.
Direct Mail is a marketing powerhouse that delivers results. As the latest Joint Industry Currency for Mail (JICMAIL) report discloses, direct mail stays in front of customers longer, making it more effective than digital alone.
And it’s not just about awareness, it actively drives sales, online traffic, and customer inquiries.
JICMAIL is a UK-based initiative that provides data-driven insights into the effectiveness of direct mail, door drops, and partially addressed mail. Established in 2017, it measures consumer interactions with mail in the same way TV, radio, and digital media are tracked, offering valuable performance metrics.
In an age where digital ads are often ignored, scrolled past, or blocked, direct mail is emerging as a marketing superpower. It is tactile, trusted, and proven to drive real consumer actions. According to the Report, direct mail delivers unmatched attention, engagement, and Return on Investment (ROI).
If you’re not using direct mail as part of your marketing mix, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with your audience in a way that digital simply cannot.
Clever marketers have never stopped using direct mail. Marketing is about using all the channels available to you to ensure your message gets out to as many customers and prospects as possible, and with ad fatigue and digital overload at an all-time high, consumers are tuning out of online marketing.
Direct mail gets noticed because it’s physical, personal, and delivered straight into people’s hands. Unlike fleeting digital ads, mail remains in the home for days or weeks, creating multiple opportunities for engagement.
According to the Report, direct mail commands 108 seconds of attention on average (compared to less than two seconds for social ads), as well as a 96% engagement rate for direct mail and 80% for door drops, while mail is the most trusted marketing channel among 18–34-year-olds.
Moreover, the Report found that unlike digital ads, which can be ignored or lost in the endless scroll, direct mail leads to real consumer actions, including a 35% increase in purchases triggered by mail year-over-year, while 12% of warm direct mail drives website visits, thereby boosting online sales.
Thanks to advances in data-driven marketing, direct mail is now highly targeted and personalised, making it even more effective: Precisely personalised mail gets 45% more engagement than generic mail, while geo-targeted mail reaches nearly 29 million UK households efficiently and can be personalised, automated and hyper-targeted for maximum impact.
In doing so, direct mail deepens relationships with customers, encouraging repeat purchases and brand loyalty, while in terms of value for money, compared to digital advertising, direct mail is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels: cost per minute of attention for direct mail is £0.11 compared to £0.31 for social display ads.
Major brands as well as small businesses have already acknowledged the rediscovered value of direct mail, with Jaguar Land Rover’s most recent direct mail campaign generating 2,455 enquiries and 431 car sales, providing an ROI of 514:1, while organic food delivery business, Abel & Cole, saw its door drop campaign exceed targets, with 538 QR code scans and new customer acquisitions.
The data is clear: whether you want to acquire new customers, drive online traffic, boost sales, or build long-term relationships, mail is the solution you need in 2025.
Pictured: Andy Hore, Operations Director; Greg Girard, Managing Director; and John Lamont, Technical Services Director, CX Services.
