In addition to the contributors from 2023 – Ginger Black Analytics, Epsilon, DBS Data, Join The Dots, Sagacity, and the Letterbox Consultancy, seven new participants contributed data to the Response Rate Tracker this year: Whistl, PaperPlanes, Conexance Choreograph, PSE Offline Marketing, The Specialist Works, Go Inspire, and Herdify.
JICMail – the joint industry currency for mail – said the latest results revealed that the average warm direct mail campaign has a response rate of 7.9%, cold direct mail 0.9%, and door drops 0.6%.
The 2024 data contains aggregated anonymous campaign level data gathered from by the 13 organisations, spanning sell-side businesses, agencies, data, and technology partners.
JICMail gathered details from 2,341 campaigns spanning the last three years. Campaign details include industry sector, product type, response metric measured, B2C vs B2B targeting, warm vs cold objectives, brand vs response objectives, mail type used, campaign volume, spend and duration, along with response rates, Return on Investment (ROI), Average Order Value (AOV), and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) data.
JICMail said benchmarks are available across 22 sectors and product categories, including the retail/online retail, mail order, finance, charity, telecoms, travel, and medical sectors.
The highest response rates for warm direct mail (DM) are found in the medical category (25.9%), while for cold DM the highest rates are found in the retail/online retail and mail order sectors (1%). For door drops, the highest response rates were found in retail/online retail (3%).
While warm DM has over double the ROI of cold DM (£9 vs. £3.90), due to higher response rates and 80% lower CPAs, JICMail said cold DM is nonetheless a vital channel for customer acquisition.
AOV is over 2.5 times higher for cold vs. warm DM, which JICMail said pointed toward the high value that a new customer obtained via mail can bring to an organisation.
It said door drops, with their average response rate of 0.6% and ROI of £2.60, are being used to good effect by advertiser sectors ranging from telecoms, retail/online retail, mail order, and charities to gambling, magazine publishing, and letting/estate agents.
JICMail director of data leadership and learning Ian Gibbs said: “In an economic climate in which performance marketing is struggling to make an impact, it is vital that marketers widen the net and explore all channels available when looking to driving immediate returns from their marketing spend.
“Having accurate benchmarks by which to set targets, track relative performance, and validate measurement results, are all crucial steps in making the most out of a performance-oriented direct mail or door drop campaign. I’m delighted that we’ve managed to bring an expanded Response Rate Tracker to the industry to help do just this in 2024.”
Response Rate Tracker data is now available to all JICMail subscribers through a new interactive dashboard viewable in the JICMail Discovery data portal.
