The breakfast event, held at the London offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and attracting mailing houses, advertisers, and agencies, also hosted a raft of industry speakers discussing the virtues of mail compared to or when used in conjunction with other mediums.
Several JICMail users, meanwhile, shared case studies highlighting how its data has been used to convince their customers of the effectiveness of mail.
The new whitepaper, titled ‘JICMail: Mind the Measurement Gap’ and put together in collaboration with the Data and Marketing Association (DMA), shares a raft of useful statistics and tips on how to measure campaign effectiveness.
JICMail said that for the publication, it mined over 1,000 campaigns from the DMA’s Intelligent Marketing Databank to reveal a host of insights related to campaign measurement and effectiveness.
The whitepaper highlights the increasingly complex challenges that measurement practitioners and marketers face when attempting to paint a full picture of marketing effectiveness.
It also compiles thoughts and advice shared at an earlier roundtable event convened by JICMail and the DMA that represented a cross-section of marketers and measurement practitioners.
They agreed that despite an industry hooked on measuring short-term outcomes and easily accessible digital campaign reporting, marketers and measurement practitioners have a responsibility to refocus the measurement conversation on brand, response, and business effects.
Ian Gibbs, director of data leadership and learning at JICMAIL, said: “From rigorous client on-boarding processes, to the development of bespoke client-specific measurement frameworks, along with advice on not letting the quest for perfect measurement get in the way of creating something immediately practical and meaningful, this paper is packed with essential tips for marketers and measurement practitioners.”
At yesterday’s event, following an introduction and overview of the last five years from JICMail engagement director Mark Cross, speakers included a keynote state of the nation talk from PwC on the media market and measurement, presented by Sam Tomlinson, media and entertainment leader at PwC.
There was also a cross industry debate titled ‘Minding the Gaps in Full Effect Measurement’, while JICMail revealed the pilot results of its new research looking at the way that its panellist households spend time with their mail, part of its ongoing Attention workstream. A panel discussion surrounding big planning questions was also part of the morning.
JICMail shared DMA research at the event that found that 41% of all metrics used to measure campaign effectiveness relate to less meaningful campaign delivery and digital vanity metrics, while 59% relate to meaningful business, brand, and response outcomes.
It added there was evidence that below-par campaign measurement was having a negative impact on overall marketing performance.
JICMail also warned that “the multi-channel reality” in which consumers, planners and practitioners now live creates a double-edged sword, as while advertisers can take advantage of significant effectiveness multiplier effects, this also increases complexity, with each channel battling to prove attributable and incremental effects.
In one session, Matt Dailey, chief performance officer at Havas, highlighted some of the ways in which digital advertising altered the marketing landscape.
“What digital has brought, and what the digital channels are actually based on, is ease but also cost, so in particular lowering the cost of specifically targeting, allegedly, individuals.
“Sam [Tomlinson] mentioned about the issues with the actual effectiveness and accuracy of that targeting. But especially with channels like mail and TV, as you tried to break down the people you were targeting the costs went up and up, and digital overcame that where you could do those multiple levels of targeting with barely any increasing cost.
“So everybody became obsessed with cost of impressions, cost of clicks, cost of reaching those individuals, but they forgot about value; what does it actually do, what has it actually delivered to the business, was reaching those people of any use to us, and – as was brought up with ad fraud [earlier in the day] – did we actually reach any people and how many times did we reach those same people.
“So if we try and move everyone back from cost to value, that will really help overcome some of those issues.”
The whitepaper found that campaigns including ad mail "are producing the most coherent measurement plans", with data showing a larger number of response effects created by campaigns including ad mail than those including digital, email, out-of-home, radio, press and magazines, and TV.
Case studies shared at the event by those using JICMail data to support or strengthen customer campaigns included Mark Davies, managing director of Whistl Doordrop Media, who talked about Oddbox. He also highlighted the effectiveness of door drops for e-commerce brands.
Graham Thomas, sales and marketing manager at Eight Days a Week Print Solutions (EDWPS), showed how it used JICMail’s audience campaign tool to help convince a women’s online fashion brand to use mail, while director of growth Nathan Rose and media account director Jodie Hanrahan from Join The Dots said they were able to use the JICMail data to prove the impact of mail to the RSPCA.
