Why Ian Gibbs says mail earns attention that lasts - Transcript
Rory
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Mail Unleashed. Brought to you by the lovely folks at Marketreach. And today it's my huge privilege to be joined by Ian Gibbs. Now Ian is, takes deep breath. He's the Director of Data Leadership and Learning at JICMAIL. He's the Head of Data and Planning at the UK DMA. And he's also the founder of a consultancy, rather fabulously called Data Stories. Have I got that all right?
Ian
Yeah. And I'm pretty impressed. Well done Rory.
Rory
Not a bad feat of memory. Well, Ian welcome. I'm looking forward to nerding out extremely on the whole business of mail and measurement. Because I think it's a field that is sometimes achieves huge heights of sophistication, but a lot of the time is done. I think for, as the famous phrase goes. For support rather than illumination. It is often attributed to David Ogilvy. He never in fact said it. That many people use data like a drunk uses a lamppost. For support rather than illumination. And I think that is quite commonly true, particularly when we talk about things like vanity metrics.
Ian
Well that's it, so right look my work with JICMAIL is obviously about measuring the mail channel. The work with DMA is much more media neutral. So depending on the day of the week you catch me on. I am either a massive mail advocate or I'm a little bit more balanced. But I'm doing both today. I've spent a lot of my time at the Data and Marketing Association, building an advertising effectiveness database. Or a marketing effectiveness database.
There's 1700 campaigns in there. It's a nice blend of like performance and brand. It's a nice blend of acquisition and retention stuff. But crucially, it doesn't just allow us to look at what the drivers of marketing success are. It allows us to look at how we're measuring marketing. And how we're articulating success, like the boardroom. And so I've looked at the 1700 campaigns and like, guess how many metrics, award entrants have been using to articulate the effectiveness of their campaigns? How many KPIs do you think you've got on that database? Yeah, the total number of KPIs people are using.
Rory
Probably about six, is it?
Ian
There's 200 different ways people are using to tell us about campaign effectiveness. It's completely ridiculous. So if you're trying to have a really.
Rory
In one defence, different brands should have different metrics.
Ian
And different categories. Absolutely.
Rory
In some senses, you know determining own metrics for success aren't crazy.
Ian
Yeah. Absolutely. But I think, it's the shape of those metrics which is worrying.
Rory
Go on.
Ian
So we put them into four different groups. So there are business effects. The stuff the board care about. Profit growth, market share growth. Having a difficult conversation with the CFO. They're the metrics you need to hit them with. And there's the brand metrics. Which obviously brand campaigns are tasked with. The performance metrics which the short term campaigns are tasked with. You know, short term sales conversions. And the fourth group are the campaign delivery metrics. So this is your video plays, clicks, likes and shares.
You can see where I'm going with it. It's the vanity metrics. You asked marketers which are the most important group. They'll say business effects. And they'll say that the campaign metrics are the least important. Look at what they do, though. 40% of those 200 metrics are the campaign delivery effects. So they're saying one thing and they're doing another. All of the measurement, or 40% of the measurement is going on to this less meaningful stuff.
Rory
Is it simply because it's easier to measure?
Ian
Yeah, totally.
Rory
There is a danger, however. Which is that, the very best marketing ideas continue to deliver value for years. And yet, marketing is in an unfortunate position relative to justifying its existence, because you're held accountable for every single unit of cost. But let's say you come up with a killer breakthrough. And Drayton Bird who's, you know, not if you like a fluffy marketer. Always said you don't do direct marketing to make money.
You also do it to learn or you mostly do it to learn. Let's say in a piece of marketing, you discover something which is decisively valuable. And that bit of information has value to everything you do for the next 15 or 20 years. You can't claim the credit for that. Except within a very narrow timeframe. In between you performing the act and the next quarterly reporting round or annual report. Whereas its real lifetime value might run into the hundreds of millions. Instead, they're judged to the short term cost justified by a short term flipping whatever.
Ian
Yeah, this is the thing, right? Stuff which is hard to measure. You need a little bit of air cover. It's like you have cynics about brand advertising. Because you can't measure its effects. You know, for one two years down the line. Actually, if you can quantify a little bit of its short term effects. Even though it's not really what it set out to do. It just gives you enough air cover. Yes, to justify the long term. And that's why actually something like mail. You know, we call it a super touchpoint. Let's touch a little bit more about this in a second. But it's a super touchpoint channel because it does a bit of both. It's good of the upper funnel and the lower funnel stuff.
We've started looking at some of the DMAs data to see what else it can tell us about super touchpoints. As you layer in more touchpoints, acquisition effectiveness increases. Even if ROI comes down a bit. It's still really high at the upper level. But don't just judge this stuff on ROI. It's a total quantity effects which is really important.
Rory
I mean, the person is either a profitable customer or they're not.
Ian
Exactly, you know, if you're driving some profit.
Rory
Trading on fewer and fewer potential customers because of your obsession with the low cost of acquisition. Yeah. Is not really the way to grow a business. I've often wondered if that's why. Partly you see the phenomenon in large parts of the west. Which is businesses don't grow very much.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
Because they assume that cost reduction is a strategy.
Ian
Yeah. But the other thing about the mail channel. I think this perception that it's expensive as well. I mean, you use that term Rory. But I think, because it's so attention rich, if you start costing up. The cost it takes to acquire a minute of attention with mail. It's pretty much neck and neck with the other channels.
Rory
It's about 120 something seconds, by the way. Yeah. It's fairly routine.
Ian
Yeah, it's about a minute for a door drop. It's actually up to 140 seconds for a piece of direct mail. And that's across anyone in the home, across 28 days.
Rory
And also it's kept and read at a moment of your own choosing.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
Which is not true of a lot of communications either. We have the earlier case study on, a direct mail case study from Hiscox. Where the letter, which is wine stained. Opens with the sentence the most expensive bottle of wine you own may not be in your cellar. It's the one that tips up on your carpet.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
Now, as soon as I read that sentence. Now that's not just me as a copywriter. I think that's consumers as well. You have the feeling that something of added value has been put into the construction of that message. And therefore the message I think has much more import.
Ian
Yeah. Whereas most of the stuff you see in performance marketing terms is purely transactional, it's deal focused.
Rory
It's ridiculous.
Ian
The tactile nature of the mail channel. That it's a wonderful blank canvas for creativity. I mean, Lexus sent out about a thousand mailers or something like that to high end people that in their target audience. And it was literally a like a golf tee. Which unwrapped. So you can actually practice your putting on it. And invited you to a sort of test drive on a golf day. And then there was a piece from Skin Cancer UK. Where they put the letter.
Oh yes that's wonderful. Yeah. That came from Ogilvy I think, didn't it. You put the letter in this kind of, tanning machine and suddenly, you know, it's all crumpled. But I think, again. You know, you look at this stuff and think, well, that looks quite expensive. I don't if I can afford to do that. But it's not just that your the creative platform that mail provides. Which gives it super touchpoint strength. It's the targetable nature of it. But I think if someone has gone to the effort of printing and sending you a mailer. There's a high level of trust there.
Rory
Yeah.
Ian
And I think that's probably the important distinction between the abandoned shopper cart.
Rory
And there's also assumed relevance.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
It also has that yes or no factor. You have something in your hand. You can either bin it or you can act on it. But it does put you in that situation where you have to make a decision.
Ian
Yeah absolutely.
Rory
That no other medium you can ignore. You know, you can ignore banners. No one expects you to do anything in response to a TV commercial. But it does say, here is an offer for you. Which may or may not be attractive. But you can either take it or leave it.
Ian
Yeah, and do you know what?
This is exactly the sort of thing that we've been trying to measure at JICMAIL for the last eight years. We were set up to provide comparability between the mail channel and TV and digital. Because mail generates ad impressions.
But that was never acknowledged before. And, so now that is acknowledged through the sort of reach and frequency and lifespan metrics that we measure.
We've measured over 360,000 mail items now. We measure about 25 different actions that consumers take with their mail. And yeah. I think the most important thing is that mail does generate impressions. And people say to us, well, I can, you know, I get 5 million ad impressions digitally.
Rory
Yeah.
Ian
A hell of a lot cheaper than I can mail. But, you know, if your average digital ad impression is lasting on screen for less than half a second and mail's lasting you know, for seven days. It's a completely different sort of ballpark in terms of potential attention. But actually we should probably consider that mail often amplifies the strengths of other channels as well. And works best in an integrated campaign.
Rory
I mean, you might argue that. Because it has both what you might call upper funnel and lower funnel effects. To do a large top of the funnel campaign without at least testing mail in the mix. Is probably an act of folly. Yeah, I would argue. Assuming scale. I mean, we ought to talk about things. Mail is not a very. You know, it can be highly emotional. It's wrong to think of it as purely transactional. You can achieve remarkable emotional effects.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
In the medium. If you get the right creative people on the job. Obviously if you want to. If there's a very, very casual bit of information you want to send to millions and millions of people. Which doesn't require engagement, thought or, you know. Or indeed much in the way of conviction. Or convincing. Yeah, there are better channels and no one is disputing that. We ought to include door drops in this, by the way.
Ian
Absolutely.
Rory
They seem to me, again, underused. I think they seem to have single handedly created the fresh food and vegetable shop that are boxed.
Ian
There are so many digital brands or direct consumer brands. Which have realised they've maxed out on growth achievable with digital. With digital channels. So they're going to explore other performance channels.
Rory
I think HelloFresh was one of them, wasn't it? Where they had a major breakthrough.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
Where they realised that if. And that is a point by the way, which is for any idea. Obviously, you know, there's a level in which ideas grow, you know, sort of organically through word of mouth, etc. But at some point you may well find yourself maxed out.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
On one particular medium. Exactly. And then you have to grit your teeth and go, well, this next medium, maybe more expensive. You know, the cost per eyeball may be higher.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
But if the alternative is stagnation.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
That's an interesting thing, which is the human and the tangible will take on a new significance. Yes. Because they're scarce.
Ian
Yeah.
Rory
In other words, we pay attention to what's scarce or unusual. Yeah. Now one thing, digital print is obviously interesting. Extreme personalisation is obviously interesting. Because extreme personalisation through the post. If automated is very, very potent.
If you can actually replay to people three or four things about them which are true. And then explain why it is they need the product or service. You know, creative people have been trying to do that often by implication. We know you're the kind of person who. If you can do that for real, that's really, really interesting.
Ian
Yeah. I mean half of personalisation isn't the creative. It's just relevance. And relevance is created by good targeting. And mail is so good at that. It's so good.
Rory
Yeah. Well Ian it's been an absolute joy. This has been absolutely fantastic. I'm sure the audience have got even more from it than I have. But this has been tremendous. Everybody watching. Just to say that if you'd like to know more about how to unleash the power of your direct mail. Well, obviously, you can talk to Ian.
But if you're not talking to Ian, you'll find an awful lot more if you go to www.marketreach.co.uk Once again, all that remains for me to say is thank you very much indeed for appearing.
See you all next time.