At the same time, the amount of time consumers spent looking at their mail and retaining it in the home increased across all mail types.
JICMail said volumes tracked on its panel increased by 12% in Q2 2024. Mail from political parties in the run up to the General Election accounted for 10% of volumes, which more than quadrupled year-on-year.
Volume growth was also driven by the travel and retail sectors, which JICMail said painted a healthy picture of cross-sector confidence in the mail channel.
The average piece of business mail was interacted with 4.8 times over a 28-day period, direct mail 4.8 times, partially addressed mail 4.2 times, and door drops 3.1 times.
The average lifespan in the home was 8.6 days for business mail, 7.3 days for direct mail – up 4% year-on-year, 7.2 days for PAM, and 5.9 days for door drops – up 3% year-on-year.
The average piece of direct mail was looked at for 132 seconds across 28 days, door drops 60 seconds, business mail 175 seconds, and partially addressed mail for 88 seconds.
Non-political mail also continued its upward trajectory in terms of commercial effectiveness, with the amount of mail stimulating a purchase reaching 5.3% – up 8% year-on-year, and the proportion generating website visits increasing to 8% – up 3% year-on-year.
Over half (51%) of mail that drove a purchase did so online – the highest reading of this metric since purchase channel was split out by JICMail in Q3 2023. Mail from the utilities and financial services sectors was the most likely to prompt an online purchase.
Direct mail from political parties increased by 343% year-on-year in the quarter, while political door drops increased by 324%.
JICMail said the ability of the mail channel to stimulate vital conversations within the household proved to be one of the key positive outcomes for political parties who invested in the channel. 14.6% of political direct mail prompted a discussion, while for door drops the discussion rate was 11.9%.
While the political parties dominated mail volumes, mail from the NHS proved to generate the highest share of attention in Q2 2024.
Ian Gibbs, JICMail director of data leadership and learning, said: “It’s exciting to see confidence returning to the mail channel in Q2 2024, buoyed by strong mail engagement rates and commercial effectiveness.
“While the General Election played a huge part in stimulating volumes, this wasn’t the only driver of growth however and it’s encouraging to see retail and travel advertisers in particular using the omni-channel strengths of the mail channel to full effect.”
Gibbs told Printweek that JICMail saw a similar boost to volumes in Q4 2019 – which included data from the prior General Election – it climbed by 16% at the time. But he said lifespan did not change much year-on-year during the 2019 election, whereas it did in this summer’s election.
“Clearly whatever political parties have done this time around has had more staying power in the home. A lot has obviously changed since 2019 and it may well be that voters were just more engaged this time around as a result.”
JICMail data is gathered from a panel of 1,000 households every month. The mail activity of every household member is tracked using a diary-based app. Every mail item they receive over the course of a week is captured and everything they do with that mail item over the course of a month is recorded.
