Major new mail attention study: The Time We Spend With Mail

JICMAIL can now reveal the findings from a major year-long study – 'The Time We Spend With Mail'. The research quantifies the amount of time consumers spend with their mail. The average piece of Direct Mail is looked at for 108 seconds across the course of a month, while the average Door Drop is viewed for 46 seconds.

The mail channel is more attention efficient than a host of other media platforms, resulting in the recommendation that it is a “must-have” channel on attention-based media plans.

The year-long measurement program has seen JICMAIL role out full attention measurement across its entire panel of 1,000 households per month (capturing time-spent metrics for Business Mail, Direct Mail, Door Drops and Partially Addressed Mail). At the same time, the AI driven video analytics company Lifestream has provided directly observed mail attention data with which to validate the panel findings, while PwC have scrutinised the mail efficiency calculations that JICMAIL has generated to compare delivery of time spent to other media channels.

Key findings include:

Mail is a high attention media channel. The average Direct Mail item generates 108 seconds of attention across 28 days; Business Mail 150 seconds; Partially Addressed 64 seconds; and Door Drop 46 seconds.Lifestream data has validated these time-spent figures self-reported by the core JICMAIL panel with an in-home video analytics exercise that has proven a high degree of accuracy among panellists in reporting the time they spend with mail in the home.Mail attention is strongly linked to commercial effectiveness. There is a x2 to x3 multiplier for time spent with commercially effective Direct Mail items and a x3 to x5 multiplier for Door Drops. Commercially effective mail items drive a range of effects including purchases, footfall, discussions and voucher redemptions. Most notably however, mail in turn generates a huge amount of digital attention for brands’ owned channels: the average mail item which prompts advertiser website visits, does so for five minutes a session on average.Location in the home and contextual relevance are key drivers of mail attention. The Living Room and Kitchen are particularly high mail attention environments, with charity, medical and government mail often found in the former and retail and restaurant mail often found in the latter.Mail attention is generally a solus activity and it is more attention efficient than virtually all other media channels. Using a methodology reviewed by PwC, it has been revealed that it costs just £0.07 to generate a minute of consumer attention among ABC1 adults with Door Drops and £0.11 with Direct Mail. As a consequence, mail is more attention efficient than social display and digital display advertising.Mail attention data is now available on an ongoing basis via JICMAIL – measurable across the 1,000 households and over 10,000 mail items measured monthly by Kantar. Key mail advertisers will be able to assess the time consumers spend with their mail along with the standard JICMAIL metrics of reach, frequency and mail lifespan.

Key Mail Attention Metrics (Q4 2022):

Time spent across 28 days

Direct Mail - 108 seconds
Door Drops - 46 seconds
Business Mail - 150 seconds
Partially Addressed - 64 seconds

The Attention Efficiency of Mail:

Note: Attention is measured using an eye-tracking methodology for all channels
apart from mail. Mail attention is a claimed metric measured using the JICMAIL diary
survey and verified by observed video analytics data. Viewability and % Viewed
metrics have not been taken into account as standard across this analysis.

Ian Gibbs, JICMAIL’s Director of Data Leadership and Learning says of the research, “We’re delighted that JICMAIL has managed to provide a definitive view on the time spent with mail, plus a whole host of additional insights into the planning factors most strongly linked to high mail attention. Triangulating in on the truth using multiple data sources is an important step in contemporary media research, and it’s been a great validator of the core JICMAIL panel methodology to see how closely aligned it is with observed video-analytics data."

Mark Cross, JICMAIL’s Engagement Director says, “Appreciating that attention is a ‘hot topic’ for all planners, we were determined with this work for Mail to find its rightful place in these considerations. The results in this report are nothing sort of stunning, deserving high attention from planners across the disciplines. The journey of mail around the home accumulates un-paralleled levels of largely solus time spent with mail, triggering multiple minutes across the marketing funnel and offers the prospect of a high attention effectiveness multiplier. Rewarding the time spent with mail is now a key planning metric!”

The Time We Spend WIth Mail

Do you know how many seconds of attention are paid to Business Mail over 28 days?

Do you know how many seconds of attention are paid to Direct Mail over 28 days?

Do you know how many seconds of attention are paid to Partially Addressed Mail over 28 days?

Do you know how many seconds of attention are paid to Door Drops over 28 days?