Five ways marketers can Totally Mail It with a smart media plan
When building a media plan, it’s useful to think of the world of football and how managers assemble teams of players with complementary skills to strengthen the whole squad. Doing this well improves their chances of winning and collecting that all-important shiny trophy.
Likewise, marketers need to assemble the right media mix to deliver campaign success. In a world of fragmenting audiences and pressurised marketing budgets, every channel has unique attributes to leverage to strengthen ROI.
The revised advertising spend forecasts coming from trade bodies, analysts and holding companies illustrate how marketers are trying to do more with less. For instance, the IPA Bellwether report published in April 20251 showed budgets had fallen for the first time in four years (although things may pick up), making ROI a priority for all marketers. Meanwhile, direct marketing has seen consistent growth for nine quarters.
Make time for a genuine assessment of media channel attributes
The landscape is looking tough but there is a silver lining – marketers have the impetus to assess the different strengths of the many media channels available to determine the optimal mix that can deliver both effectiveness and efficiency.
Physical media such as direct mail can bring unique attributes to such a mix; it can positively disrupt the usual patterns of customer receptivity, amplify the impact of other channels and drive customer action. Research shows campaigns with mail in the mix are 52% more likely to report ROI benefits. They are also 75% more likely to report profit uplifts and 65% more likely to report market share uplifts.
In our Totally Mailed It (TMI) brand campaign, we spoke to some of the best and brightest marketing leaders to understand how they build out the right strategy, and how use the power of mail to achieve success.
1. Target real effectiveness
While efficiencies are important, they don’t deliver engagement and action. As Andrew Tindall, SVP of Global Partnerships at research company System1 Group stresses, “We … have become efficiency obsessed. Less, quicker, cheaper, fleeting. Mail is effectiveness cream on top of an efficiency milk.”
Andrew argues that the best marketers experiment with media, and mail can play the disruptor in the mix. He suggests a budget formula of 70:20:10 with 70% of resource given towards proven growth drivers, 20% for experimentation and 10% for ‘moonshots’ – gambles that might prove transformative. Mail, joyful and tangible, should not be underestimated, and with a seven-day long dwell time in the home, it makes for a very different customer experience. Read more of his point of view here.
2. Diversify the media mix
The beauty of a diverse media mix is that each channel has a role to play in the customer journey and at each touchpoint - and mail certainly earns its place on the list. Well-known columnist and brand consultant professor Mark Ritson says, “Adding different channels into an integrated campaign always beats betting the house on a single approach. So, there is no ‘best’ approach.”
Marketers should consider every channel and not come to media planning with a predisposed best practice list, he argues. The 134 seconds of attention mail achieves on average is just one potential argument for seriously reviewing mail. Ritson adds, “When it is welcomed, targeted and useful, mail is physically engaging and represents one of the great communication forms”, and you can find more from him here.
3. Embrace the unique attributes of mail marketing
Mail’s disruptive quality delivers unique results. It does things other media just can’t quite achieve. Mail is a personal channel. When ideated and implemented well, it shows that a business cares about its customers, building a profitable relationship over time with valuable customers.
Receiving something of value will make an impact. Dino Myers-Lamptey, founder of The Barber Shop, builds on this, “You're always interested in your mail because it’s a moment of receiving something. And it's easy to stand out because you're not competing in a cluttered space. I think that mail coming through the door is unique moment. You're not really sharing your attention with other forms of media - and probably the one time that people put their phone away.” Read more of this media expert’s thoughts here.
4. Differentiate to build your brand
Differentiation comes from building a brand personality and mail’s ability to be creative in comms can contribute hugely to this. Mail’s physical existence allows people to enjoy a real picture of your product, understand its solidity and get a better sense of how it might fit into their lives.
In this way, it can integrate with other elements of a campaign and bring your message from online into the real world. Nishma Robb, founder and CEO of The Glittersphere, says, “There's a real sense of emotion and theatre around direct mail that is quite hard to achieve in another media and you can control that.”
Read more of her thoughts here.
5. Cut-through and a premium brand experience yields growth
Customers can now tune out of marketing comms very easily. But we have a lot fewer items coming through the mailbox than our inbox, or social media feeds, allowing mail to grab attention. Nathan Ansell, CMO of Waitrose has tangible proof of the power of mail to create a premium brand experience, reinforce brand values and drive business results. In his testimonial for the campaign he said mail “…can be a great way of gaining cut-through, with a premium brand experience extending directly to consumers and ultimately delivering significant business growth.” You can read his thoughts here.
The supermarket’s highly valuable customer base was eroding over time due to a perceived lack of appreciation for their loyalty. Then Waitrose launched a highly targeted, personalised mailing programme to engage and reward its most valuable and valued customers. The results included a more than 50% redemption on mailing packs and a huge boost to Waitrose’s NPS cscore. Nathan says in his TMI contribution, “It delivers strong results while boosting the performance of other media channels.”
Every media channel has a role to play in an effective customer journey, and marketers looking to optimise their campaigns should consider how mail might work for them. You can explore the stories of our TMI campaign contributors and what they have to say about the power of mail via this link.
