I was amazed to see the stats from a new service called Remote Control Mail. RCM, if you're unfamiliar with the company, allows you to route your mail to its facility where it is opened, scanned and uploaded online for your viewing pleasure. After viewing, the mail can be forwarded to you, shredded or recycled.
The stats I found so interesting were the breakdown of disposal methods: 13% is forwarded, 53% recycled, and 34% shredded.
Isn't that fascinating?
How good does your direct mail need to be in order for it to make it past a filter like this?
Or perhaps this is a good thing because it does guarantee that your direct mailer will be opened?
Your thoughts?
Eric,
Thanks for providing Remote Control Mail with the opportunity to comment to clarify a few things about our process and the statistics of how people handle mail, as well as to explain how one of our upcoming services, Unmailme, will be of momentous interest to savvy direct marketers.
Let me first make clear that we do not open and scan all the mail (i.e., automatically), as your first and last paragraphs suggest. Instead, we give the customer the choice of what should be done. Another point to make clear is that not all the mail in our clients’ accounts is letter mail; some of it is in the form of parcels.
The data you have cited is what the customers do with the first choice they have. 53% of the time (using even more recent data, the figure is 60%, and the more recent data is what I’ll use here), they recycle or shred the mail piece without having opened it. That is, by sight alone, they determine 60% of the mail pieces are not something they want to open and scan -- to read.
19% of the pieces are opened and scanned, and 21% are forward-shipped without being opened. (For those who choose to open and scan, there is a second set of operations: 47% recycle after scanning, 30% shred after scanning, 23% ship after scanning).
We agree that this data is fascinating, and you’re correct that there are implications for direct mailers, but in reality the implications will be nothing but positive. Let me clarify what to some people may be a counter-intuitive conclusion: our ability to collect the first-ever data on mail usage, and allow recipients to communicate preferences to mailers, will provide mailers with unprecedented targeting capability and higher response rates.
If you’d like to talk more about how, in 2007, we will employ technologies for mail recipients that can actually help direct mailers to increase their response rates and profitability, I’d be happy to explain our secret right here on this blog.
Let me know if you or your readers might be interested in a dialogue.
Cameron Powell
Remote Control Mail
www.remotecontrolmail.com
Posted by: Cameron Powell | December 28, 2006 4:08 PM | Permalink to Comment