NEW THINKINGFROM BRITAIN’S BEST BUSINESS MINDS.THE COLLECTED THOUGHT PIECES

MAILMEN.co.uk

MAILMEN.co.uk

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CONTENTSINTRODUCTION 5TESS MACLEOD SMITH 6 VP Publishing & Media, Net-a-Porter

TIM LINDSAY 10CEO, D&AD

BEN HAMMERSLEY 14Former Deputy Editor, WIRED magazine

BETH REEKLES 18Youth Author & Young Entrepreneur

ADAM PIKE 22Co-founder, SuperCarers.com

PETER FIELD 26Author & Marketing Consultant

BELINDA ROWE 30Global Managing Partner, ZenithOptimedia

LES BINET 34Head of Effectiveness, Adam & Eve DDB

JAE HOPKINS 38Marketing Director, Exodus Travels

TIM GENTRY 42Global Revenue Director, The Guardian

ABOUT MARKETREACH 46

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MAILMEN.co.uk

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INTRODUCTIONIt’s my pleasure to introduce this collection of thought pieces by some of the UK’s leading business minds.

From Belinda Rowe, Global Managing Partner of ZenithOptimedia Group, to Les Binet, Head of Effectiveness at Adam & Eve DDB, our ten thought leaders have a wide spectrum of knowledge and experience.

The one thing they share is an ability to offer unique insights into the strengths of mail in an increasingly digital age. Like when Net-a-Porter’s Tess Macleod Smith reveals how her most devoted digital shoppers are influenced primarily by print.

These pieces are personal reports from the cutting edge of marketing thinking and reveal how mail is fast becoming a precision tool for customer acquisition and retention. I hope you find them as enlightening and useful as I have.

If you’d like to harness the power of mail in your own business, we’d be happy to share our insights, tools and expertise. Simply call our team on 0800 030 4483.

Jonathan Harman Managing Director Royal Mail MarketReach

“ TO SEND PEOPLE ONLINE, SEND THEM A MAGAZINE.”

Tess Macleod Smith VP Publishing & Media, Net-a-Porter

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WHY THE NEXT LEVEL OF FASHION PUBLISHING IS SHOPPABILITY.Tess Macleod Smith is Vice President of Publishing & Media at Net-a-Porter. She has revolutionised fashion publishing by making the company’s print magazine, Porter, shoppable. Here she explains how Porter translates into sales and its role in the company’s wider marketing strategy.

We launched Porter with the intention of becoming pioneers of content as well as commerce. Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter’s founder, told us to forget what we had done in the past and take risks. So we took the traditional model of a fashion magazine and flipped it on its head.

Previously, the fashion publishing industry put the focus on the brands and the industry, not the customer. Lucy Yeomans (Porter’s editor) and I had worked on Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, so we understood the power of publications to inspire women, but we could see a real disconnect between gorgeous magazines with beautiful images, and what we were trying to sell them.

Porter has revolutionised print. Eighty-five percent of our core audience – who are devoted digital shoppers – say that print is the number one influencer in telling them what to buy and from where. But we saw an opportunity to elevate what print does by adding in a layer of service, which is shoppability.

Every single page of Porter is shoppable. Using our app, readers can immediately buy a particular item, choose to see more items like that one, or be taken to our concierge service. There are roughly 7,500 items to buy in every issue, including holidays, books and theatre tickets. We get 10,000 scans an issue and can track the data directly from those so we know what is successful and what isn’t.

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“ Eighty-five percent of our core audience say that print is their number one influencer.”

Everything we give our readers, whether it’s a magazine, an email or direct mail, needs to provide the same luxury experience that customers get when they receive their Net-a-Porter order. Porter is about indulgence, which is why we thought a physical copy was so important. We’re an extremely high-end online retailer, so for us it’s important to give people something that is tangible and tactile.

The importance of mailThe same goes for all of our marketing, it needs to feel premium. So when we send out direct mail to tell people about Porter, it needs to have a luxury edge. We pay a huge amount of attention to the weight of the paper stock, the foils, the varnishes. Our goal is to creatively deliver a message directly into the customer’s hand that goes hand in hand with the reason she should shop with us – and that’s luxury.

Online shopping is not only more popular because people are short of time, but also because of the thrill of getting something delivered. It’s akin to being sent a present, and direct mail is a teaser of that. It’s another opportunity to deliver a tactile experience. It serves as a reminder of the feeling you get when you receive our beautiful black box wrapped in ribbon and filled with treasures. Mail is always going to play a role in the retail world. It speaks to us in a way that other channels don’t. We all know the feeling of receiving something special in the post. You can’t replicate that feeling. We’ve proven with Porter that print isn’t dead – far from it. It gives us authority, tangibility and longevity.

While Porter is sold on the newsstand, it’s also sent out in the post to our highest spenders, who are also extremely busy, professional women. These days, many of us simply don’t have the time to go to a newsstand, so mail is the best medium for reach as well as impact. In a world of convenience and online shopping, having things delivered directly to us is the new norm. We use direct mail because we know it works – we invested in two very successful campaigns in the UK and US this year – and they can be directly attributed to an uplift in Porter subscribers.

The magazine, like mail, is a great acquisition tool. We know that once someone is a subscriber to Porter they visit the site 25% more often and spend 120% more with us. You can’t argue with figures like that.

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“ Print isn’t dead – far from it. It gives us authority, tangibility and longevity.”

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The future of retailI think the future of retail is about great service. That’s what brands can learn from Net-a-Porter. The customer is at the heart of our proposition, not the fashion industry. If someone is reading the magazine in London, New York or Hong Kong and a product catches their eye, it can be with them in hours – even before they’ve finished reading the magazine. We – Net-a-Porter and the fashion industry as a whole – will have to keep adapting so that we become more involved in moments that matter in our customer’s life. She’s busy and there’s lots of noise. How do we edit that out? It’s about harnessing technology and using it to inspire, educate, surprise and delight. But it’s important to remember that she sets the agenda and we have to adapt. If we don’t, we are not in her world, so it’s critical that we evolve. We have to be there for her on any device pretty seamlessly, but the beauty of what we do is that we can adapt very quickly to whatever is new. More than half of our sales come from mobiles, so we had to adapt to that. But it still has to feel right. Whether she starts on a desktop, moves to an iPad and finally finishes her sale off on her phone in a taxi, the whole experience has to feel seamless and beautiful.

Data is transforming what we do, there’s no denying that. And because of our multi-platform model we have huge amounts of data about our readers. We can actually see in real time who these women are, what their profession is, what they are buying and how they accessed it. It’s fascinating.

Programmatic will continue to revolutionise the way we do business by allowing us to target our customer wherever she is. It also allows us access to a wider part of her day than ever before. But even within programmatic we still want to behave in a way that speaks to our luxury customer. We take great care to ensure that this wide variety of environments is still curated to safeguard our brand.

Tess Macleod Smith VP Publishing & Media, Net-a-PorterTess Macleod Smith is Vice President of Publishing and Media at Net-a-Porter. She has revolutionised fashion publishing by making the company’s print magazine, Porter, shoppable.

“ YOU CAN’T TOUCH, FEEL OR SMELL PIXELS.”

Tim Lindsay CEO, D&AD

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WHY A THIRST FOR REAL EXPERIENCE MEANS THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A ROLE FOR MAIL.Tim Lindsay has spent 36 years in advertising and has been joint Managing Director of BBH, President of Lowe Worldwide and Chairman of Publicis UK. He is currently CEO of D&AD, a non-profit organisation set up to recognise excellence in advertising and design. Tim gives us his view on the formats set to dominate the world of communication.

When I started out in advertising, there were just a handful of ways of connecting with people – only five or six media channels. But today, there are so many more. That’s exciting, because there are more opportunities. But it also creates challenges, because people have become so used to filtering out information that they don’t want.

In this day and age, you have to be much more subtle. Although the idea still stands that as an advertiser, you have to be one of two things: interesting or useful. And if you can be both, well, that’s even better. Some of the most impactful pieces of marketing these days are the ones that are physical and keepable. That’s what stands out, simply because so much is digital.

The importance of value exchangeWe’re going to see more innovation that ticks both boxes, innovations such as the Nike+ FuelBand, which was developed with the help of creative agency R/GA. It had obvious utility and the communication around it was compelling. It launched in 2012 and, already, the technology seems a bit outdated, but that just suggests to me that our appetite for interactivity is insatiable. In the future, I think technology will develop so that an element of interactivity will be woven into almost everything that creative agencies do. I wouldn’t be surprised if that even applies to the kind of advertising and marketing that we get through the letterbox.

To an extent, that’s already happening with some leading the way, taking a future vision in the present. Take for instance Saatchi & Saatchi, they did a direct mail campaign for an eye care provider called OPSM.

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It was a children’s bedtime storybook called Penny the Pirate (which was also available as an app) that allowed parents to read along with their children and use a series of fun tests to screen them for eye conditions. The results could be entered online and, if necessary, an appointment could be booked straightaway.

Another trend beginning to take shape and sure to become commonplace is for people to want to engage with brands that have a purpose beyond profit. When the growth, profit and sustainability agenda all intersect, it can be a powerful thing. We’ve seen it with Lifebuoy, a Unilever hand soap brand that aims to drive down infant mortality in Indian villages. Of course, if people don’t have what they need to wash their hands thoroughly, disease can spread more easily. So it makes perfect sense – and they’ve really shown their support through action. The rise of digital and social media means that we are becoming more socially conscious – we are privy to things happening around the world that we might not have been before – and I think that, as a result, there will be more demand for other companies to follow suit.

Data and creativityData, too, has had a major impact. It has taken on an influential and sometimes contentious role in modern creative agencies. I was at an event in New York recently and someone asked me if I thought big data drives creativity. I think my answer might have disappointed them – but I had to say that I don’t think it does. Often it’s used ineffectively. No one wants to be chased around the internet by that pair of chinos they didn’t buy from Gap. And the industry has a big problem with fraud.

Often brands pay for eyeballs – but that’s really measured in clicks. And sometimes those clicks are being generated by a bot, rather than a human being. The upshot is that people care about that type of advertising less. And, as a result, brands will pay less for it. That can easily lead to a vicious downward spiral.

“ Some of the most impactful pieces of marketing these days are the ones that are physical and keepable.”

“ The more digital our lives become the more we want a balance.”

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So I don’t believe that the rise of digital and big data means that it’s the end for other forms of advertising. It just means that their role will have to change. Mail’s role might not be about mass circulation, but it will certainly have a role. One of the reasons it will is because in an increasingly digital life, people want real experiences. Did TV kill cinema? Did cinema kill radio? One of the reasons that festivals and live music are so popular now is that people have realised that they don’t want to experience music just on Spotify.

I see it as part of a broader tendency for people in the 21st century to be drawn towards experiences that offer multi-sensory stimulation. The more digital our lives become, the more we want a balance.

That’s where mail scores – but like anything, it has to be good. Done well, direct mail is a wonderful thing. With a piece of print or mail, you get to touch it, feel it, see a better quality image, smell the paper. All that stuff is evocative, and none of it can be achieved by pixels.

“ With mail you get to touch it, feel it, see the quality and smell the paper. That is evocative, and it can’t be achieved by pixels.”

Tim Lindsay CEO, D&ADTim Lindsay has spent the past 36 years in advertising. Over that time he has been Joint Managing Director of BBH, President of Lowe Worldwide and Chairman of Publicis UK.

“ AS THE WORLD BECOMES MORE DIGITAL, SMART PEOPLE TURN TO MAIL.”

Ben Hammersley Former Deputy Editor, WIRED magazine

THE ROLE OF MAIL IN THE DISRUPTION OF DIGITAL ADVERTISING.Ben Hammersley is a former Deputy Editor of WIRED magazine and now writes, speaks and presents television programmes about the evolving role of technology in our lives. Here he shares his belief that when it comes to marketing, mail dwarfs digital.

Digital advertising is moving incredibly fast. Five years ago seems like prehistoric times. Even in the last six months, things have changed considerably.

One of the most significant shifts has been the increasing realisation that the industry is subject to a lot of smoke and mirrors. Many people are even starting to question whether its very foundations are deeply flawed.

Digital provides the ability to record and measure data, which has brought about two things. The first is ‘click fraud’. The second is the revelation, through accurate numbers about dwell time and the success of CTAs, that the vast majority of digital advertising is ineffectual in terms of driving sales or changing behaviour. Display ads and interstitials – they hardly work.

But most digital advertising isn’t just impotent. It actually makes people’s lives worse by getting in the way of what you’re actually trying to do. That has been highlighted by the introduction of mobile ad-blockers for iOS9 and Android devices. People are prepared to hand over their own hard-earned money in order to avoid digital ads. And, when they do, they find out that it speeds up and significantly improves their browsing experience.

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The future of digitalIn the future, I can’t see this changing. If anything, it’s going to get worse. We’re going to see more sophisticated smartphones and the rise of wearable technology – that’s inevitable. Digital and mobile devices are going to become even more involved with aspects of our lives, they are incredibly important to us on a personal level. Hard as it is to imagine, they’re also going to become more mission-critical when you’re using them. And that all means that, when you’re using them, you’re not going to want to be interrupted by somebody who’s trying to sell you something. Digital advertising, unless it changes radically, is only going to become even more annoying and unloved.

One of the ways in which many people think that digital advertising will evolve is with interactivity and virtual reality. I’m willing to bet that in the office of every advertising agency in London right now there is an Oculus Rift headset. Maybe it can be used to control a drone, or to provide consumers with some other kind of interactive experience. Not only will any campaign like that cost a lot of money, it will also cloud a fundamental principle: first, you have to make a good product, then you have to tell people about it in a way that fits with their context.

Does VR help to do that? I’m not convinced that people care enough about toilet cleaner – or whatever it might be – to take the time to engage with an interactive experience. But if you send me a voucher for money off the toilet cleaner and it comes to me at the right time, or better yet, you send me a sample, then that’s awesome. But give me an interstitial when I’m trying to get to the website and I’ll hate you.

The future of mail That’s partly why I think that as the world becomes increasingly digital, a few smart people will turn towards something that can be considered old-fashioned – direct mail. I live in Los Angeles, and every month I get sent an envelope filled with vouchers and offers for local services. Of course, I throw a lot of it away, but some of it is genuinely useful and leads to real transactions. I use a money-off voucher to wash my car every month. Even if just 3% of a direct mail prompts a response, that’s a rate of return that dwarfs most digital advertising.

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“ If you send me a money-off voucher or a sample, that’s awesome. But give me an interstitial when I’m trying to get to the website and I’ll hate you.”

People often talk about the way that data from digital can be used to advertisers’ advantage. But it often feels creepy – “How does this company know I like running?!” – and it overlooks the fact that there is a lot of useful data available elsewhere. You can get a good understanding about someone from where they live. Even more if you take into account sources such as Experian.

Digital is brilliant for many things, but there are limits to what it can do. Paper gives you amazing high-resolution images, beautiful colours and a tactile quality that has a different semiotic value from anything else. There’s so much cultural meaning that is embodied in paper.

So, if you’re doing something digital, give it all the best qualities of digital – speed and interconnectivity. But if you’re doing something with paper, make the most of it by making it the most ‘papery’ thing it can be. That’s how to capture people’s attention.

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“ As the world becomes more digital, smart people will turn towards mail.”

“ The return rate of direct mail dwarfs that of digital advertising.”

Ben Hammersley Former Deputy Editor, WIRED magazineBen Hammersley is a former Deputy Editor of WIRED magazine and now writes, speaks and presents television programmes about the evolving role of technology in our lives.

“ A REAL BOOK IS TANGIBLE. PEOPLE WANT THAT.”

Beth Reekles Youth Author & Young Entrepreneur

THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNT FROM THE YOUTH MARKET.Exeter University student Beth Reekles launched her career writing romantic fiction for young adults on the storytelling platform Wattpad. She swiftly gained 19.2m reads and 100,000 followers on the site before signing a three-book publishing deal with Random House. Her success led Time to name her in 2013 as one of the world’s most influential teenagers.

If I’ve learned anything from being on Wattpad, it’s how important it is to branch out across all platforms. It’s not about one on its own. It may have been my writing on Wattpad, but all the other channels had a role to play. For instance, I have a blog on Tumblr that I also promote across WordPress and then on Twitter. Readers seem to care about the little things, like whether you’ve bought a new scarf or discovered a new book.

Young people are growing up knowing how to use all these different platforms, this generation almost instinctively knows what content to put on what channel and I think this is a lesson that others are learning and will continue to do so.

When we look to the future, I think there’s still a lot of growth to be had in social media, certainly from the older generation, and definitely from businesses. It’s taken a while for companies to get comfortable on social networks like Twitter. It seems a bit strange to post pictures of the office team, but that’s what people like to see.

If I was going to order something from a brand I wasn’t familiar with, I’d go and check out its social media profile first and see if they were the sort of people I wanted to deal with.

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“ Mail resonates on a different level – maybe because it feels a bit unusual.”

To succeed, brands are going to have to follow the example of the youth market, which will have a massive impact on social media. Companies will need to take things one step further on social – people want to watch live Q&As and vlogs, and they want to use Periscope, because seeing how animated people get when they talk about things makes a big difference. It shows they care.

The relevance of mailThat same principle applies to mail, which is having quite a comeback. Mail resonates on a different level – maybe because it feels a bit unusual. To be honest, I delete most promotional emails as soon as I see them in my inbox but if I receive something that stands out, because it feels special or high-quality, I keep it. It gets tacked on the fridge. That’s where our ‘important’ mail goes.

And that way it gets seen all the time and serves as a reminder of a particular product or company. I remember receiving an awesome letter that was folded in an intricate way, like origami. I thought that was fantastic, people can be so imaginative when it comes to mail.

Long-form content will continue to grow because it has similar impact, it helps your audience feel they know you better. And even though people want things instantly, once they get invested in a subject, they’re willing to spend more time reading and watching. They may not read long-form on mobile, but they are also using their iPads, laptops and desktops, and when it’s something they care about and want to know more about, they’re quite happy to read 1,200 words on the subject.

Online and offlineI used to be completely online and didn’t have anything to send, but now I have a physical book, it’s different and my approach has changed – I want what I send out to feel personal. There’s something really nice about being able to send them a little note saying, ‘I hope you enjoy the book. Thanks for getting in touch, love Beth’. I definitely expect to see more brands taking a similar, personalised approach.

I get excited when I get a book delivered even though I’m expecting it. And there’s something about it being an actual thing. The Kindle has been around for a long time, but it still doesn’t quite compare. Nobody wants to collect digital books. If you see something you want online,

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“ It gets tacked on the fridge. That’s where our ‘important’ mail goes.”

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you want to try it out, to test it, to feel it, and that’s what you get with a real book – it’s a tangible product and people want that. I recently received an advanced copy of a book and the author had addressed the envelope to ‘the brilliant Beth Reekles’ and put little gold stars on the envelope, which really made my day – it made my week if I’m honest! It was so nice that she added that personal touch. Things like that take effort, you know somebody has taken the time to stick on those little gold stars, that kind of detail matters.

Even from a personal point of view, mail is important in my life. I’ve got a friend in Iowa and I always write to her, and I think it makes it a bit more special because of the effort you put into it. When it’s written down on paper, you certainly think a lot more about what you’re writing, and that comes across to the other person. In fact, come to think of it, with my books and letters, mail is a big thing for me right now and I’m sure it’s always going to be.

Beth Reekles Youth Author & Young EntrepreneurExeter University student Beth Reekles launched her writing career on the storytelling platform Wattpad, swiftly gaining 100,000 followers. A three book publishing deal with Random House followed, as well as recognition from Time.

“ I definitely expect to see more brands taking a similar, personalised approach to their mail.”

“ PRINT MAKES DIGITAL PERSONAL.”

Adam Pike Co-founder, SuperCarers.com

WHY CARING MATTERS FOR THE FUTURE OF START-UPS.Adam Pike founded SuperCarers – an online care management platform – with his brother Daniel in a bid to allow more elderly people to be cared for in their own homes rather than in residential accommodation. Adam looks at how the world of start-ups won’t just have to bring a product to market but also be a socially responsible way of working.

Our company, SuperCarers, pairs the elderly with suitable carers. We then use an online platform to connect the families directly with the carers so that they can manage the logistics on an ongoing basis, from home or at work. There are 3.8 million people over 65 living alone in the UK, and 2 million of these have a care-related need. This means that not only do we have a chronic problem with loneliness, there’s a lack of disease prevention, so people are going into hospital and not staying in their own homes.

There’s no denying that our aim as a business is to turn a profit, but we want to be socially as well as financially successful. If we can achieve that profit as a consequence of improving the wellbeing of older people, families and their carers, then the business will flourish. If we do that badly the business will fail. And that’s a great position to be in because we are rewarded by the success of our product. It’s in this respect that I think the most interesting developments are going to take place within the world of tech start-ups. We are going to see more and more socially minded companies appearing, ones that are looking for social as well as financial return. That’s how start-ups can stand out.

There aren’t many ideas that haven’t already been tried in some format in the tech space, so what could be a differentiator is what impact your company has on the world around you. We’re living in a much more philanthropic culture and there are ways of marrying that with being commercial.

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Integration is keyIn the past few years tech has been very siloed – someone builds a product with a suite of features and that is that. But what we’re seeing now is the success of products that are open to accommodating other apps. Those are the ones that are taking the world by storm. So you have Slack where the business proposition is simple – you can communicate better with your family or friends – but it’s open to integration with other apps like Twitter or Google Docs so you can manage documents and customer service in one place. People have started to recognise a need to deepen the product, because to stand out the product experience has to be designed with the mindset of a busy user at the forefront. This aspect of integration is something that we’ve applied to our communications channels too. We’re dealing with three very different sets of people – the carers, the elderly people and their family members – so we need to talk to them in different ways.

Our website and our digital marketing are just our shop windows. They are there to connect you with a human being. To enquire about the service you need to speak to someone, and in order to receive the service someone comes to your home. It’s very personal. And our channels have to reflect that, which is why we send so much mail.

The family members receive an electronic message to say that the carer has arrived, because this is information that they need to know immediately, but we send the elderly person a letter to tell them that the carer is coming, and a picture of what they look like. It’s very intimate and there’s no way of replicating that. A digital platform is always going to struggle with intimacy, in its very nature it feels like something that is electronically built, structured, planned and cold. Whereas with print you get something that feels much more natural – in every sense – and, therefore, intimate. Being able to hold a piece of paper or booklet or brochure in your hand is reassuring and comforting. It feels solid and adds substance to what you’re trying to tell people.

The role of dataThere are the personal touches that can come with mail. We’ve taken that one step further too, and we use the data that we have on our customers, that includes the elderly people and their family members,

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“ We send people a letter to tell them their carer is coming.. It’s very intimate, there’s no way of replicating that.”

and tie it in with the calendar to send them cards on their birthday or grandparents day. And when someone refers our service to a friend, we send them a thank you card. It’s about giving people that lovely experience that they weren’t expecting. A memory or memento. Something to keep on their desks.

Using data in this way – to help offer a more advanced and tailored service – is something we hope to do more of. That might be using the data that we have on our clients, with their permission, to link with the local pharmacy so that they know when there’s a carer at home to take a prescription delivery, or maybe linking with Ocado so that shopping is delivered when there’s a carer there so that they can unpack it and get everything in the fridge.

This is something that I’m keen to explore further, such as how we can combine a savvy use of data with our marketing communications. While I love receiving mail, I want mail that’s relevant to me, that will make me act on it. Like when a charity that I’ve donated to sends me a letter to tell me what they did with my money, the chances are I’m going to donate more. I want to take this further and use data and mail combined to tell people about our business. It’s about getting that blend right, the use of data and the right channels, and using them to get people to stop and think that this service could enhance their lives, meaning that the time they spend with their relatives are the moments that count. Yes we are a business and at the end of the day we want to make money, but it’s also about purpose as well as profitability. I’m confident that the two can go hand in hand.

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“ Holding a piece of paper in your hand is reassuring. It adds substance to what you’re trying to tell people.”

Adam PikeCo-founder, SuperCarers.comAdam Pike founded SuperCarers, an online care management platform, with his brother Daniel. Their goal is to allow more elderly people to be cared for in their own homes, rather than in residential accommodation.

“ MAIL CAN EVOKE AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE.”

Peter Field Author & Marketing Consultant

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THE NEED FOR CREATIVITY IN EFFECTIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGNS. Peter Field is a Marketing Consultant and former Strategic Ad Planner. He specialises in data analysis and the link between creativity and effectiveness. Here, he explains that the current focus on short-term measurement is having damaging effects, and that brands need to reconnect emotionally with their audience.

The digital revolution means that we’re seeing a massive shift towards short-term thinking in marketing. Instead of evaluations taking place over a year or more, which used to be the norm, people are increasingly looking back over weeks, days, perhaps even minutes.

That is extremely damaging to effectiveness. We know (particularly when it comes to real-time evaluation) that it is leading brands to produce campaigns that maximise short-term effects. This, in turn, completely negates long-term success.

What actually drives growth in the long-term is sustained commitment behind some kind of emotional association or message – or something that gets brands talked about. These are, in the vast majority of cases, not to do with timely offers or indeed new product functionality, but emotional platforms. And that is what will be sacrificed in the future – really powerful long-term branding.

The power of mailWe know from research that good mail pieces live in the home for a long period of time. The nature of the message delivered, I would argue, has to be at least in part brand driven. It should engage. These words are commonly used, but to really engage and enthuse the consumer with the brand and give them something they actually want to hold on to is so important.

This brings me to another aspect that is often overlooked in direct mail, which is the play value – the physical, tactile nature of a mail piece.

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Perhaps it’s a three-dimensional mailer, perhaps it just has some fun built into it, but whatever it is, it means that your direct mail becomes more than just an information piece.

There are individual case studies of where this has been done very well. EE produced a great example of effective direct mail – it involved a piece of cloth with a printed message on it, the idea being that when you’re with EE you make so much use of your phone and need to be able to clean the screen. Or Compare the Market, which has those collectable meerkat toys. It’s about playfulness, they warm us to the brand and make us feel they are on our side.

It goes to show that if you invest in production values, you have the ability to transform campaigns. Yes, it costs more. Most companies that use direct mail are driven by value per delivery run. But what they may have forgotten is that if you just drive down the cost you also drive down the value.

These more playful, engaging mail pieces, the ones that took time and money and creative juice to develop, often end up being dramatically more effective.

Learning lessons from other channelsOne of the biggest challenges that digital marketing faces is ad blocking. I personally think it’s been a very healthy development for the industry. I think that ad blocking may ultimately revolutionise the way people use online services.

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“ These more playful, engaging mail pieces often end up being dramatically more effective.’’

“ Good mail pieces live in the home for a long period of time. The nature of that message, therefore, has to be in part brand driven.’’

Too many brands are obsessed with in-your-face sales messages, which are of course very short-term and widely disliked. If you are going to intrude on someone’s private grounds, you’d better earn the right to do so. And the way brands will earn that right is by developing advertising that is in some way rewarding and engaging. That’s the big lesson that’s being overlooked.

Agencies will do well if they learn directly from the TV industry, the lesson being to encourage the production of more entertaining advertising. I think this is what brands need to, and will, start to revisit. You’ve got to engage your consumers if you want to be effective. It’s so obvious. Nobody watches TV breaks that are exclusively full of irritating ads. We learnt that many years ago and the message is going to undoubtedly re-emerge.

The future of advertising will be more creative; more engaging. We know this works. This is not some kind of vanity call, it’s about commercial good sense. You engage consumers, you entertain consumers, you sell to consumers and you keep them locked in to your brand.

If we can do this, if we can engage and enthuse our potential customers, all kinds of communication – from digital to mail – will have an incredibly bright future in the marketing world.

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“ Something that is often overlooked in direct mail is the play value – the physical, tactile nature of a mail piece.’’

Peter Field Author & Marketing Consultant Prior to his work as a consultant for the IPA, Peter spent 15 years as a strategic planner in advertising. He is a renowned author on media effectiveness and specialises in evaluation and measurement of advertising campaigns.

“ MAKE THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY A RETURN TRIP.”

Belinda Rowe Global Managing Partner, ZenithOptimedia

TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY.Belinda Rowe is Chairman and Global Managing Partner of ROI agency ZenithOptimedia. Here she notes the speed of change in advertising and media and explains that, to succeed, advertisers must understand how consumers are engaging in this new world.

All forms of digital disruption are significant in terms of the changes they are driving in consumer behaviour, so companies are thinking about how they engage with customers.

The industry is going to have to start paying a great deal more attention to the fact that consumers are always “on”. These days, consumers can enter the customer journey at any point. They can do huge amounts of research themselves and then enter the buy phase, without even passing through traditional awareness stage. Previously we all thought in terms of traditional marketing models, but at ZenithOptimedia we’ve shifted to less linear and more circular thinking to reflect the fact that customer journeys are now more like a loop and less like a funnel. That is a fundamental shift from a planning perspective and one that other companies are going to have to wake up to.

ZenithOptimedia designed what we are calling the consumer journey loop. We spend a lot of time describing the consumer journey, breaking this down and thinking about what the opportunities are for advertisers to grow their business through strong strategies via that insight.

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“ There’s a real opportunity for mail if we understand what consumers like and want to engage with.”

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Understanding engagement with mobile

Gradually, the world has been becoming more mobile-focused, and this will only increase. As a direct result, we see massive importance in understanding consumer engagement with advertising content on mobile. It gives us the ability to really track what is going on with the consumer, their engagement and the data you get out of that.

Because we are working in such a digitally-enabled world, we have access to masses of data and can use this to inform what we should be doing with content. We can see in real time what’s working and what’s not. But to stand out, we need to be one step ahead when it comes to forecasting. I think the agencies that thrive will be the ones that strive to create impactful ideas and solutions for brands to drive significant returns.

Owned, paid and earned media Another important thing that the industry is going to have to adapt to is the relationship between owned, paid and earned media.

There needs to be a lot of careful consideration about earned media first, because more and more consumers will start to engage with brands through their favoured places online and physically, through loyalty schemes or personalised communications. In other words, companies need to understand those sites and publications that their customers and potential customers turn to.

And then how do they layer paid on top? As with any investment decision, it will be crucial to think about what the return is and how it is assessed. We’ll continue to measure content in terms of consumer engagement, but it will become increasingly important to know the return to the business in sales or improved brand health.

At ZenithOptimedia we are investing significantly in data, digital, mobile, performance marketing and content, because this is where the world is moving. Bringing those together will enable agencies to go to clients with a strong point of view, which is underpinned by ROI.

“ Start thinking about every touch point and the value of that touch point to the consumer. That is a really valuable way to think about an opportunity for mail.”

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Programmatic at the heart of the business

We were also the first agency to put programmatic advertising in-house and integrate it into our business. One of the biggest benefits has been the visibility it gives us about what is going on with consumers across a range of different channels, meaning that we can use all of the data we gather in real time.

Brands build relationships with consumers more effectively using behavioural data, which enables them to create more personalised communications. This is because behavioural data provides a better understanding of what consumers like and what they engage with, whether that is a physical or digital touch point. Whether you are a retailer or an airline, you’ll need to start thinking about every touch point and the value of that touch point to the consumer. That is a really valuable way to think about an opportunity for mail.

Mail can add experiential value When you provide something via mail you have to think about what value you are bringing to a consumer at that exchange, and deliver it in a creative and impactful way. You want to provide the consumer with some genuine experiential value.

And these factors shouldn’t be used in isolation. Instead the focus should be on the whole consumer journey. For example, when it’s apparent that mail can provide strong engagement with the target consumer, and we happened to do programmatic at the same time, then we would absolutely use mail. We can already see a future where all media becomes programmatically driven.

Belinda Rowe Global Managing Partner, ZenithOptimediaBelinda Rowe founded ZenithOptimedia Australia in 1999 and became its Chief Executive, after co-running the creative shop Mojo. In 2010 she moved to London to become Global Managing Partner.

“ SOMETIMES ONLY PAPER WILL DO.”

Les Binet Head of Effectiveness, Adam & Eve DDB

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THE TENSION BETWEEN LONG AND SHORT-TERM DATA ANALYSIS. Les Binet, Head of Effectiveness at Adam & Eve DDB, specialises in the tension between long and short-term strategies for brands and businesses. Here he talks about this tension and the impact that it is going to have on the future of advertising and marketing.

Too many advertising campaigns today focus on short-term results rather than long-term brand building. When I first started in this business, clients typically had books with five years of sales data and they could just look at the trends. These days, you come up against clients that say, ‘we’ve got some data from last week somewhere’ or ‘we‘ve got some data six months ago but that’s in a different format because all the systems have changed’.

If we don’t measure the long-term effects of what we’re doing it becomes much harder to justify budgets. If one looks at a typical advertising campaign, very often you find that they take six months to a year to break even. If all your evaluations are under six months, you’ll often conclude that the campaign doesn’t pay for itself. There’s lots of budget-cutting happening on this basis, as well as a belief that spending money on paid media – especially physical mail – is inefficient and old-fashioned; a 20th century solution to a problem. But this isn’t the case at all.

The appeal of mailA perennial question is whether a consumer welcomes getting something on paper as opposed to something online. Personally, I do stuff online all the time and I like to interact in that way, but there are some contexts where I want paper.

For instance, I was in the process of booking a holiday and researching the destination. It was a big holiday; a big investment in time and money. I was doing lots of research online, but I actually realised that there was a role there for books and brochures. This was a real eye-opener. It’s just not comfortable or possible to absorb that sort of information on a screen in an efficient way.

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So I got a whole load of brochures and it was a much better way to access the information. There was one particular company whose brochure – the layout, the weight of the paper, the quality of the photography, everything about it – just sent out the right message. You can’t replicate the delight of holding something like that in your hands. The same applies to mail.

There have been some great examples of direct mail in recent years – it’s still a hugely effective and often overlooked area. There was a campaign for a particular brand of paper towels, demonstrating their durability. To do this, the paper towels were posted to people around the world. Another great example was for pensions, and was aimed at high-net-worth individuals. When they opened the box, which was sent in the post, there was a little mobile phone in there. They then pressed a button and got put straight through to talk to a fund manager. That shows the perfect blend of physical and digital. But it was the physicality of what I was sent in the post that originally caught my attention.

The digital dilemmaWithin digital, the next big thing is going to be ad blocking. I think the industry is in denial about what a big issue it is going to be. What we are going to see, and what we are already seeing to some extent, is that when you try to interrupt people when they’re doing things online, they get very angry. This is particularly true with mobile, because you’re getting right into the fabric of people’s everyday lives. It’s like you’re walking about your daily business and people are standing behind you saying, “Oi! Oi!” and poking you in the back of the head.

It’s the same with programmatic actually. In fact, my impression so far is that there’s still a great deal for the industry to learn about programmatic buying. It’s based on cookie data, which shows what people have been doing over the past few weeks. But the average person deletes their cookies every seven days.

“ You can’t replicate the delight of holding something like a brochure in your hands. The same applies to mail.”

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And anyone who’s got an ounce of sense will know it’s not 100% accurate. I buy Christmas presents for my nieces and nephews, as a result of which my computer seems to think that I’m a six-year-old girl or a 14-year-old boy. So this idea that programmatic buying gives you completely perfect targeting is fictional. But I do think that there are areas of programmatic that haven’t received enough attention. For example, we know in general with advertising that reach is more important than frequency – the first exposure to an ad is generally the most efficient one.

The next step will be, I think, planning advertising with perfect execution – making sure that everyone in your target audience has seen your advert once before you move on to building up frequency. You can’t do that with conventional advertising, but you could do it with programmatic buying if you have enough data and the customer’s permission to use it. So yes, there’s a time and place for digital, and a time and a place for physical. I think what marketers need to do is get back into the habit of researching what people really want. How do they feel about one format compared with another? What’s useful for consumers? And I think that requires a change in perspective instead of ‘we’ll spam stuff and look at the response rate’.

Marketers need to get back out there and ask how people would like to receive information. At the end of the day, it’s about making the lives of the consumers easier, not the lives of the marketers.

Les Binet Head of Effectiveness, Adam & Eve DDBLes is one of the industry’s most respected experts on advertising effectiveness and, along with Peter Field, conducted an in-depth analysis of the most successful UK campaigns of the past 30 years.

“ There’s a time and a place for digital, and a time and a place for physical.”

“ PRINT PROVIDES RICHNESS IN A WAY THAT DIGITAL CAN’T.”

Jae Hopkins Marketing Director, Exodus Travels

HOW INSPIRATIONAL STORYTELLING CAN DRIVE PEOPLE ONLINE. Jae Hopkins is Marketing Director at Exodus Travels, which has specialised in responsible adventure holidays for more than 40 years. Having previously worked at Butlins, where she launched its customer magazine, Jae explains the importance of print and content to engage with customers.

Social media may have altered the face of marketing, but there are more changes afoot. Many of these will be driven by society’s new-found informality and individuality. We no longer gear our marketing towards large groups of faceless people, which is great, but the result is that they expect to be communicated to accordingly. Everything is human and warmer, more targeted and personalised. Look at the big supermarkets like Waitrose – they send offers for products that they know you buy on a regular basis – or even let you choose your own offers.

This means that if customers receive something that is more generic, they might be less inclined to pay attention. They want to know how they can benefit from particular brands or offers. What’s in it for them? That’s the next level in my opinion, even more personalisation. But brands have to be willing to embrace it.

The technology now exists to talk to people in this way quickly and cost-effectively. Data tells us what individual people are engaging with and what they aren’t, and programmatic technology allows us to harness this information, communicate with our customers in their preferred way and focus on what we know they love. This is how Exodus will operate in the future.

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“ The details are important. Customers notice how brochures, booklets and mail feel.”

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Not only will this show our customers that we are getting to know them and what kind of travel they enjoy, but it will prevent us from sending them communications that aren’t relevant.

Along with personalisation, Exodus, and the travel industry in general, has another interesting challenge – our customers are savvy and connected, but they aren’t necessarily creating content. They are on social media and they’ll hit the ‘like’ button, but they aren’t tagging us on Twitter and Facebook sharing our videos, or creating their own. So we have to produce content ourselves. Our emphasis is on storytelling, and using advocacy. It’s not groundbreaking but it’s absolutely relevant, especially in travel, which is more emotionally-led than most other industries.

Print’s power to inspireProducing something tangible is a necessity. Paper-based communications are key to our marketing mix. It’s something that I really believe as I’ve seen first hand the impact of printed communications that inspire. We know that it’s beneficial to pay attention to things like paper stock. The details are important and we know that customers notice how brochures, booklets and mail feel. At Butlins, we took a publication that simply told people about the holiday and turned it into something where they looked at the pictures and read what other customers had to say, and thought, ‘I want my child to dance with Angelina Ballerina’ or ‘I want to walk on one of those beaches’. And they were fantastically successful. They increased propensity to book by 50%, which is incredible. That’s how powerful print can be.

The way people research and buy holidays has changed. Fewer and fewer people walk into a travel agent on the high street to find out what’s available – we have to go to our customers. But on the flip side, customers are more empowered than they have ever been – they can access all the information that they need instantly, so brands have to stand out. And you do that by being human, and being different. Brands can make an impact by producing communications that stand out on the doormat. Holidays are about leisure and me-time, and so our communications have to capture that by looking relevant and special. Companies have to care about what they are sending to their customers if they want to engage them.

“ A screen can’t compete with the warmth and richness of paper.”

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Print works best as part of a multichannel approachBut print can’t work alone. It needs to be part of an omni-channel strategy and work in tandem with digital offerings. The purpose of our printed comms is to drive people online. Our brochures and website perform two very different functions: one is about inspiration and the other is about information. The website is where you go to work out the details. It’s where you can say – I want to look at trips that are under £2,000, or trips in May. The filters are in place to do that.

But something has to drive them there in the first place, and whatever it is has to capture their imagination. It’s about seeing an image of the Aurora Borealis in Iceland or of Alaska’s wilderness and knowing that you have to go there. It’s about evoking that feeling of longing. We use images of those places to draw people in, and stories from previous travellers to bring the emotion. A screen can’t compete with the warmth and richness of paper. We’re adding to our efforts too with things like video, but in our industry, print and mail are definitely not going out of fashion.

Jae Hopkins Marketing Director, Exodus TravelsHaving previously worked at Butlins, where she launched their customer magazine, Jae is a firm believer in using the power of print and content to engage with customers.

“ One of our printed publications increased propensity to book by 50%. That’s how powerful print can be.”

“ THE DESIRE FOR PHYSICAL PRODUCTS ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE.”

“ THE DESIRE FOR PHYSICAL PRODUCTS ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE.”

Tim Gentry Global Revenue Director, The Guardian

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WHY THE PHYSICAL PRODUCT IS SET TO RETAIN ENORMOUS POWER.Tim Gentry is Global Revenue Director at the Guardian and this year oversaw the launch of The Pangaea Alliance – a group of premium publishers that use programmatic technology to give advertisers access to an audience of 110 million influential consumers. Tim looks at the impact programmatic will have on the world around us, and why the physical still holds power in a digital world.

Programmatic is over six years old now, and starting to make shifts from its traditional applications in digital display. The technology is well known for what we refer to as ‘dynamic retargeting’ – basically serving digital display ads to users who are likely to be interested in their products (perhaps because they’ve searched for something, for example, or gone to a particular site). Increasingly companies can launch a campaign that takes 100% of the advertising space on a particular page. Cartier did that with the Guardian homepage earlier this year, and it’s something that we’ll be seeing much more of.

So what does the future hold? However, programmatic is often misunderstood and needs to evolve. One of the key challenges is not with the technology but with how the industry has a fundamentally short-termist perspective. If success is purely measured on short-term metrics, such as clicks and encasements, it ends up being about low-cost media – volume over quality – and that will prevent the technology from reaching its full potential. Programmatic will fulfil its promises when it’s viewed not simply as a display technology, but as a way of evolving all media.

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“ Mail can maintain power and a premium feel in a world where everything can feel a bit disposable.”

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This is beginning to happen now with Sky, ITV and Channel 4 all developing cross-platform programmatic offerings and outdoor campaigns beginning to tie up with mobile, such as Exterion Media’s partnership with Telefónica. Mail is another medium that can be triggered by customers’ behaviour and interactions with the brand. Of course some of the big supermarkets are already doing this by analysing shopping baskets or buying patterns and sending people vouchers for correlating products. These are just more examples of making media work together along the customer journey, so that we can give customers more personal and relevant experiences.

Using data effectively Of course, our ability to be personal and relevant is dependent on how much we know about customers. Currently, most programmatic is based on what people have looked at or clicked on, but there are examples of how companies have used this technology more creatively, to understand how people feel about a product or an ad.

One such example is Group M’s buying unit Xaxis. It used the camera on certain consumers’ devices – with their permission of course – to monitor their reactions to particular ads. By recording whether someone smiled or frowned, they were able to build up a picture of what was likely to work for people who shared similar interests.

Similarly, the Guardian worked on a campaign with a car manufacturer to show if it was possible to establish not just what consumers were interested in but, perhaps more importantly, what they weren’t interested in. Counter-intuitively, the consumers who responded well to this particular campaign tended to avoid other content about cars – people were interested in the brand, but not if they were petrol heads. It just goes to show the kind of advanced media strategies that are possible when programmatic is done in an intelligent way. Championing this intelligent approach is The Pangaea Alliance, founded by the Guardian along with CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters. It offers advertisers access to a highly valuable combined data set, enabling more effective audience targeting. Technology is only as good as the data available and we can also activate more effective campaigns by working together – it allows us to build up a deeper, more complete picture of our users.

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“ With a physical product, at the moment of impact, there’s a unique, fully committed interaction.”

Linking to the tangible

Ultimately it’s about using data, technology and media together to give people beautiful experiences. We see a far higher return on investment on multichannel campaigns compared to those that are focused on just one channel. In this current environment it’s about leveraging all the different touch-points – but the best experiences are frequently physical. At the Guardian, that might be about creating really impactful newspaper formats, which we’ve begun to do recently with gatefolds for big global brands appearing within the main news section. There are some interesting examples with direct mail too. No matter what size your company or budget, you can produce something physical to increase the impact of your overall campaign, such as a very simple and highly personalised piece of direct mail.

KLM carried out a campaign that involved mailing surprise gifts that were tailored according to customers’ online profiles. And Interflora responded to consumers’ social media profiles by hand-delivering flowers to them. You can imagine how much more impact that would have; receiving a personalised and timely physical item from a brand you’ve expressed a desire to engage with. Of course, the consumers had agreed that their details could be used in this way.

This desire for physical objects, from gifts and flowers right through to mail, can maintain an enormous power and a premium feel in a world where everything can feel a little bit disposable. Anything that demands attention in the physical world stands out from the type of engagement that you typically get from digital media. Think about reading a physical print product – like a magazine, a letter or a piece of direct mail – it’s very hard to do anything else at the same time. It is a unique relationship that begins with the moment of impact. There’s a unique, fully committed interaction.

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Tim Gentry Global Revenue Director, The Guardian In 2015 Tim oversaw the launch of The Pangaea Alliance, a new digital advertising proposition that allows brands to collectively access a highly influential global audience via the latest programmatic technology.

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WE CAN HELP YOU GET MORE FROM YOUR INVESTMENT IN MAIL.At Royal Mail MarketReach we have a dedicated team of media specialists, planning professionals and data experts ready to share their knowledge and expertise.

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To talk to us about how we can help, please call our team on 0800 030 4483.

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IT’S ALL ABOUTMAIL AND EMAIL

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