From stand-out to engagement to action

Awareness depends on a number of factors. These include media choice — some channels have more impact than others — as well as factors like personal relevance, timeliness and the creative treatment itself.

In my previous post I looked at how, based on the results of a neuroscience study we commissioned last year from Neuro-Insight, mail is remembered.

But generating awareness only gets you so far. Engagement is critical.

Unless consumers engage with your ad you have little chance of moving them on to the stages where they take action.

Personal relevance triggers engagement

Long-term memory encoding is one measure of the strength of a stimulus. This records how a stimulus converts into our memory, and is a metric on which mail performs strongly.

Engagement, which measures the recipient’s involvement with a stimulus, is another. In short, engagement is important because it drives memory encoding.

The study shows that the figures for mail’s impact on engagement are significant: 35% stronger than social media advertising and 33% stronger than email.

These matter because the direct connection between engagement and memory encoding influences decision making and purchase intent.

So what triggers engagement? Our study shows that a leading factor is personal relevance.

The more relevant something is to us, the more likely we are to engage with it. And mail generally scores high on one-to-one personal relevance, especially when advertisers use first-party data to ensure consumers get the right message at the right time.

It is also likely that mail’s physicality is a factor. The joy of mail is in its tactility. We open it, read it, look at it, turn it over in our hands, keep it, display it, pass it on to family or friends…all these physical actions reinforce its presence and drive engagement.

Other studies back this up. Data from JICMAIL (the Joint Industry Committee for Mail), an independent body that measures mail performance, shows that 94% of mail is engaged with in some way.

And in research conducted with Kantar TNS, 65% of mail recipients said they were likely to give mail their full attention, versus 35% for email; and 72% said they often read or review their mail at a time when they can give it their full attention.

Mail makes other channels work harder

None of this is to say, however, that other channels do not have their place. Indeed, from earlier neuroscience research, we know mail combines well with other media.

There, we saw the interaction and priming effects between mail and TV, which suggests that mail sent out during the run of a TV ad could enhance its impact and boost response.

A similar story is revealed by our latest neuroscience study about the interplay between mail and social media, where the results show that mail can make social media ads work harder.

According to the study, people who received and looked at brand mail before seeing social media advertising spent more time looking at it and had much stronger memory responses to it.

They spent 30% longer looking at social media ads (up to 4.3 seconds from 3.3), and memory encoding of social media ads was 44% higher.

The priming effects are clear, with mail driving the recipient to associate and remember more from the social media ad.

So it is clear mail has strong interactions with other channels, helping boost overall campaign effectiveness.

Consumer trust and commercial action

This research shows that mail can be a key weapon in the advertiser’s armoury, delivering cut through for marketers operating in today’s complex multi-media world.

But it’s worth remembering too that mail meets other key channel criteria. First, it can be sent to every UK household, meaning it has broad reach.

Secondly mail is trusted, with 87% of recipients saying it is believable.

Best of all, it drives commercial actions — the ultimate advertiser wish. According to IPA Touchpoints, 37% of mail recipients bought or ordered something in the previous 12 months as a result of receiving mail.

If you want to know more about our neuroscience research, click here to download your free copy of the report, or call our experts on 0800 177 7546.