Direct Mail Attitudinal Research

To understand how Irish consumers interact with Direct Mail as an Advertising Media Channel

We asked Amárach Research to carry out over 500 Face to Face in home interviews during July 2009. In this section we look at some of the key consumer attitudinal insights discovered during that research about Direct Mail and other advertising media channels in Ireland.

Consumer behavior towards Direct Mail

Consumers tend to treat Addressed Direct Mail and Transactional Direct Mail in the same way, with over two thirds of consumers showing high levels of engagement with this type of Direct Mail. Relevancy of the Direct Mail is important in determining if the material is read however 1 in 5 consumers state that they read most of the Addressed Direct Mail received. Only a third indicate throwing the material away with out reading or skimming.

For Unaddressed Direct Mail or Door Drops over half of irish consumers indicate that they either read or skim this material. Only 45% indicate that they do not engage with Unaddressed Direct Mail, again relevancy appears to be a key factor in determining if the material is read. Females and those aged 18-35 are most likely to read the majority of their unaddressed direct mail.

Irish Male behavior

51% Read/Skim Door drops
61% Read/Skim Addressed Direct Mail
61% Read/Skim Transactional Direct Mail

Irish Female behavior

59% Read/Skim Door drops

72% Read/Skim Addressed Direct Mail

69% Read/Skim Transactional Direct Mail

Consumer attitudes to different advertising media

It is not surprising that most consumers still have high likability and trust for Above the Line media. What is surprising though, is that consumers are still quite wary of Online Advertising. Online Adverts have considerably lower scores than any form of Direct Mail. Similarly Email Advertising rates badly for both likability and Trust. Direct Mail is the leading Below the Line media for all metrics, particularly for making customers feel valued and for encouraging consumers to purchase.

We probed if familiarity and comfort with using the internet could be causing this lack of trust in email advertising. The response from consumers was clear: No, this is not the reason. Most consumers that are comfortable with using the internet. Internet users feel that they get too much junk email and do not particularly like receiving promotional or advertising emails.

How impactful different advertising media is on consumers

From our research we see clear preferences for different media types amongst consumers and how impactful each of these media types are for different segments. Three main clusters are evident when responses for all consumer segments are charted; in the top right we have many of the traditional mass media types, TV, Radio and Newspapers. In the middle we have Direct Mail and Magazines/Posters. At the bottom left (least impactful) we have digital media and telephone.

Interestingly when we look at how this profile changes for different age segments we see that Direct Mail is consistently positioned in the middle for all groups, whilst digital and mass media shift significantly: younger consumers favoring digital over mass media channels and older consumers favoring mass media over digital.

It usually pays to be responsive to consumer preferences, none more so than in how they prefer companies to communicate with them. Hence our research would suggest caution in moving budget from other media to digital alone, as it could alienate a significant proportion of Irish consumers and lessen the impact of your overall marketing campaign.

Media Impact Matrix for all segments