August 4, 2007: Pitney Bowes (Europe) studies the Attention Span Given to Bills, Statements, Official Correspondence and Direct Marketing: www.g1.com/Resources/WP/Are-we-paying-attention/

Marketing was once easier. Commission either an advertising program or a direct marketing campaign, or both. Now, traditional media has fragmented, and a host of new media have appeared including email, web, SMS, sponsored links, blogs, viral campaigns, and ambient media.

Fragmentation of media gives marketers an enormous headache in attempting to reaching their targeted audiences. It also makes it potentially much more expensive to identify, test and roll out the optimum media combination.

As a result, marketers have had to think much more laterally to reach their audiences in the most cost-efficient manner. Affinity activity, where a company shares its customer contact points with appropriate (paying) customers has taken off. Alongside this, much attention is now devoted to existing points of contact with customers, either to present those customers with cross-selling offers, or to introduce offers from affinity partners.

Traditionally, the envelope carrying a bill or statement has largely been used to carry standardized additional leaflets. Not
surprisingly, response rates to these insertions have been negligible. This low payback, plus the fact that the channel is
perceived by traditional marketers as unglamorous and free, has devalued its perceived potential. Now however, as competition has become increasingly fierce, and as companies increase and extend their offerings to customers, attention is focusing back on the customer relationship management (CRM) potential of the humble bill or statement.

Research from Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software (UK) shows that marketing offers which accompanied bills, statement and other customer correspondence typically generate response rates of around 5.5% - not far off the typical direct mail campaign response rates. However, this is only achieved when marketing messages are targeted to the recipient's profile and when the printed message on the bill or statement is associated with accompanying inserted literature. The technical ability of organizations to print targeted messages, and then insert appropriate accompanying inserts into envelopes, has only been available in the marketplace for several years.

Key Findings

• Printed statements or bills receive more attention than their web equivalents. This suggests that organizations concentrating on putting targeted cross-selling messages on physical statements will achieve high return on investment

• There is also an implication that statements could be effectively monetized by introducing exclusive offers from affinity partners

• Bank & Credit Card statements are in the top slot:- in the U.S., France and the U.K. they receive even more attention than tax correspondence

• Companies using direct mail have, on average, just under three minutes to get their message across, a key point of  guidance when designing direct mail campaigns

• Email to existing customers receives almost as much attention as the typical direct mail piece, a testimony to the power of email in customer relationship management. However, prospecting emails are far less powerful, having to grab the recipient's attention within 50-90 seconds.

• Generally speaking, Italians spend most time looking at the documents they are sent, and Americans spend the least time, closely followed by the British

• Direct Mail receives least attention in France; Bank & Credit Card statements in Germany and Spain

• The US, Italy and France spend most time looking at their Mobile Phone bill, whereas the Germans spend long minutes studying their Utility bills