Direct mail drawing 4.8% response rate says IPA survey

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 24-Mar-06, 07:00

LONDON - Only 4.8% of people respond to direct mail while the average person receives 8.5 pieces of direct mail a week, according to the new TouchPoints survey results from the IPA.

The long-awaited survey covered a week in the life of 5,000 people representative of the UK's adult population in late 2005.

It is designed to survey people's media consumption, including SMS, direct mail and the internet, their lifestyles and their opinions.

The findings about direct mail show of the 8.5 pieces the average person receives a week, 4.9 (57%) are personally addressed and 3.6 (43%) are "random" pieces. The survey refers to direct mail as "ad" mail.

Just over half, or 53%, are annoyed by the amount of direct mail they receive, but 55% are happy to receive information from companies they have bought products or services from. Just under half, or 45%, said they open the majority of direct mail they receive.

There were no equivalent measurements for email, but SMS, interactive TV and the internet were covered to some degree.

Although young adults aged 16-25 are enthusiastic text message users, 70% ignore all commercial texts they receive. For communicating with people, they love electronic media -- using 48% SMS, 28% email and 20% internet instant messaging and only 5% pen and paper.

While texting, 32% of young adults are also watching TV, 18% are also listening to the radio, 10% are also on the internet and 6% are reading.

Interactive ads were liked as an idea by 29% of this age group, but by only 14% of the whole survey.

Among response-orientated agencies Archibald Ingall Stretton is one of the first to subscribe to the survey data, along with All Response Media and WWAV Rapp Collins Media.

AIS managing partner Stuart Archibald said the agency was particularly interested in the ability to differentiate between the media habits of various age groups, which for him showed how fast the pace of change is.

"It's great to have some independent analysis which confirms what we understand as an agency. The nirvana is combining information from TouchPoints with our own data," he said.

Eleven media planning and buying agencies and 10 media owners provided financial backing to fund the research project.

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