IPC – Market flash #370
IPC – Market flash #370
Read MoreTag: Worldwide
Winterberry Group's December 2006 White Paper: Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail and the Impact on Production Service Providers 2006
Winterberry Group’s December 2006 White Paper: Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail and the Impact on Production Service Providers 2006
Read MoreCampaign Effectiveness study
Campaign Effectiveness
While the typical item of Direct Mail achieves a 1%-5% level of response, there is a huge range of different rates achieved.
Royal Mail recently commissioned research to identity common characteristics of successful (and unsuccessful) campaigns.
Methodology
Quadrangle was commissioned to undertake this research among a broad base of advertisers.
Screening criteria
Responsible for organising at least one direct mail campaign in the last 12 months
Aware of the response rate you have achieved in percentage terms from your most recent campaigns
Mixture of B2B and B2C campaigns
Base
80 online interviews – 160 campaigns
239 telephone interviews – 446 campaigns
Key Insights
While the typical item of Direct Mail achieves a 1%-5% level of response, there is a huge range of different rates achieved. The most commonly achieved response rate for B2C campaigns is 3%; for B2B campaigns it is 1%.
Successful B2C mailings are particularly likely to have utilised a customer database. Evidence suggests that bought-in lists are more effective in the B2B arena than B2C. For both B2B and B2C campaigns, campaigns with “strong” database quality achieve levels of response that are c. 50% above norm.
Creativity is key to campaign success. Mailings with strong creativity generate over twice the average level of response. Those with weak creativity achieve response rates that are around a third of the average. This holds true for both B2C and B2B mailings.
Amount spent per mailing is less critical than creativity, but there is nonetheless a link between low levels of investment and low response. B2B campaigns with an investment of less than 60p per item perform particularly poorly.
Campaigns that have “strong” integration with other brand activity deliver response rates that are 60%+ above norm for both B2C and B2B campaigns.
B2C campaigns sent via Mailsort 1 achieve a level of response that is 70% above norm.
Read MoreDelta acquires Northwest in USD 3.1B deal
Delta Air Lines announced a long-speculated deal to acquire Northwest Airlines for about USD3.1 billion Monday, a combination that will create the world’s largest airline and could lead to a series of other deals to reshape the U.S. airline industry.
The new carrier will operate under the Delta name, and be based in Atlanta.
Delta said the carrier will maintain the nine hubs of both airlines in the United States, Europe and Asia, serving more than 390 destinations in 67 countries. The combined carrier will have USD35 billion in annual revenue, more than 800 airplanes and 75,000 employees, according to Delta.
But many of the employee unions at Northwest were quick to voice opposition to the deal, even though Delta said it is not looking to cut non-office staff.
The deal could lead to less competition and higher fares on some routes where the two carriers now compete. But there is relatively little overlap between the current Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) and Northwest (NWA, Fortune 500) systems.
The greater impact on competition and fares could come if other major carriers follow suit and negotiate their own deals in response. Some experts have suggested that several deals could eventually leave three mega-carriers handling about 80% of the nation’s air traffic.
Read MoreFrench Post Office makes Ebay despatches simpler
French postal operator ‘La Poste’ has launched a new service which allows French Ebay users to sort all their parcel needs online, through Ebay itself.
With only a few clicks, users can decide on how the item should be delivered, the weight, destination and whether the item is to be insured, before paying via PayPal – the method of payment preferred on eBay.fr.
The form is then printed on a simple A4 sheet of which a part will attached to the parcel, the other stamped by the counter clerk in post office and used as proof of sending. Once the parcel is prepared, the shipper merely has to leave it with a local post office – where many fast counters dedicated to parcels have been available in France since 2006.
The brand new service is free to eBay.fr users, costs no more than normal parcel rates but saves sellers time in preparing parcels ready for despatch. The parcels can also be tracked online.
Read MorePost & Parcel Magazine
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