There are many resources to use that support the contention that direct mail is a highly effective medium. Some of the research indicates that personal mail makes people feel more valuable. As odd as that may seem, that's been the approach of many mail proponents.

Others look at comparable response rates, dismissing the low response of e-mails compared to hard copy mail. These forget that e-mail subject lines of unopened e-promotions are not so different than billboards or signage that are rarely acted on directly but are still considered important and effective. And there's also the comparative cost. Unfortunately most direct mail analysis depends on a one-time comparison, hyping a doubling or tripling or response rate when the distribution costs of email are anywhere from 25x to 50x less!

This means that an entire e-marketing program can include 25 to 50 touches compared to a direct mail campaign's single touch. But it's been great to see that the emphasis in current research current mail effectiveness is as one component of a larger and multi-format communications. To this end the UK's Royal Mail research is the most interesting. They have free reports online at their Mailmen site. The most interesting is “Private Life Of Mail” where they actually spied (with permission) on people in their homes and how they interacted with mail, watching them let it pile, open it up, read it, leave it in another room, go back to it, and so on. They also used a neuroscience test “steady state typography” (no that has nothing to do with Times Roman or Helvetica) and measured what was happening as they viewed mail from a neurological perspective.

There are two free Slideshare presentations about their work, one about their fascinating research process and the other about the report summary. The reports and the presentations are well worth the time. Though there are cultural differences between the UK and the US, there is much to learn from the research.