By Erwin Busselot, Director Business Innovation & Solutions, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe
Rory Sutherland is well known for his unique take on how advertising can help positively influence customer experience and behaviour.
More recently, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group who co-founded a behavioural science practice within the agency, has focused his expert insight onthe world of direct mail.
It is something that he has said almost every business should test because it is a) quite likely to succeed and, b) as competitors are almost certainly over-focused on metrics of efficiency not effectiveness, they will be incapable of copying the success.
He has been exploring direct mail’s merits in Mail Unleashed – a series of films from Marketreach, a UK organisation that promotes the magic of mail to forward-thinking businesses. In the films he talks to leading practitioners and senior marketers within the industry about their experience of direct mail’s power to persuade.
Kicking off the series was Lis Blair, Chief Marketing Officer, MoneySuperMarket, who created some ‘really impactful’ direct mail campaigns when she was with Audi. She also helped EasyJet utilise direct mail, as opposed to email, for the first time for its Flight Club.
For the latter, a loyalty scheme was created to predominantly make the inflexibility of the airline flexible. Those customers were given the ability to change flights or a name on the booking for free. She states: “We’d identified a cohort of customers who were highly valuable to us and who we wanted to put our virtual arms around and do our best to engender loyalty. And retain that loyalty. To invite them we wanted to do something personalised and beautiful that was going to give impact, that was going to make them sit up and realise that they were special. And so, we designed a direct mail pack. It was laser cut, with a beautiful paper weight, a black envelope and an orange cut out. It did absolutely have the impact that we hoped for in terms of just being different. It thumped on the doormat, it made people read it, it made people open it. It drove all the behaviours that we hoped it would in terms of retention and it actually deepened into customers wallets in ways that we perhaps hadn’t expected.”
Creating that customer connection using direct mail is achieving impressive results in engaging Boots No7’s audience and bringing them back into store, Pete Markey, Chief Marketing Officer at Boots, told Rory in another interview. He says: “So the pack itself has done very, very well. It has a targeted offer within it but also brings to life a core part of the No7 range that we know that this audience will really engage with, because of their past-buying behaviour. So, it’s data-driven, it’s offer-led and it’s been a win-win for Boots and No7 to the point where we’ve now got more investment to do more of this activity.”
Pete adds: “I’ve always loved direct mail. I’d like to see there being more direct mail again. I think the volume that goes out now is of a kind where it is a unique moment. It is that point where someone’s taken the time to write to me, clearly, it’s a brand that I’ve got a relationship with. Let’s see what they’ve got to offer. It’s all about the data and then tailoring the creative and every bit of the approach to make it more and more personal.”
“We are a heavy user of direct mail, for two reasons – necessity and welcome packs,” Natalie Milner, group membership and loyalty director at the AA explained. “And I think there’s a real opportunity to send something that’s important of value at the beginning of a relationship. To establish that with somebody.”
She adds that is vital to choose the right media for the right message: “You canhave a weekly newsletter sent through to you by email. But you get something very different if you opt to receive the brochure through the post. And I think they do a very good job of thinking about how you were in a different mindset at that point in time. You want small consumable content in your digital newsletter and yes, you might click through and browse on the website, but you’re going to have much more attention and time when you receive that little brochure through the post.”
She experienced early success with direct mail when while at DIY superstore chain Wickes she launched the extremely popular points based loyalty program, My Wickes Card. She expands: “At the time, Wickes had no customer data. It was when the word omnichannel was first emerging. And so, this was a great way to get to customer data that we were able to leverage and use to huge effect. What was great about this was the measurability. We were able to use really robust test and control methodology and see incremental uplift, particularly around rewards statements.”
Natalie concludes: “Does direct mail have the opportunity to make you feel special? To make you feel valued? Yeah, I think it absolutely does. So, any brand looking for those little opportunities to demonstrate the fact that you’re valuable to them is going to really resonate on an emotional level.”
Creative, customised and data rich direct mail that resonates and engages to encourage long term relationships with valued customers can be easily produced with versatile digital high speed inkjet and toner technologies. With the addition of QR codes and Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities it can also connect in-person and online customer journeys.
This is something Deutsche Post’s Dialogmarketing-Monitor 2024 recently acknowledged when it reported total advertising and marketing spend in Germany in 2023 was E42.5 billion – higher than 2019 for the first time since the pandemic. It stated E5.9 billion was invested in printed mailings and 83% of recipients engaged with personalised direct mail, either in-person or online, especially if they included a voucher or discount code. Also interesting to note is response to direct mail is age independent as there is no difference between digital natives and older recipients as long as the mail piece is personalised and includes targeted offers.
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