• transactional mail, which involves transactions between businesses and their customers (bills, invoices, accounts and statements)
• promotional mail (brochures, catalogues and other marketing communications)
• social mail (greeting cards, postcards and personal letters).

Letters are undeniably under pressure from electronic alternatives due to a variety of factors, including cost-reduction campaigns by some businesses and an ever-growing choice of communications media. However, mail is still proving to be an effective and relevant communication channel.

This has been confirmed in the study A comparison of the effectiveness of marketing communication channels: perspectives from both receivers and senders by leading marketing scholars Professor Peter Danaher and Professor John Rossiter. (Australia Post sponsored the research but was not directly involved in it.) The study, launched in 2006/07, reinforces the fact that transactional and promotional letters are influential as well as effective.

Some key results from the study were outlined in last year’s annual report but it bears repeating that:

• recipients said that printed direct mail would be more likely to induce them to buy than a message received by email, phone or SMS
• householders were more likely to pay their bills on time when they received them by mail, rather than by email or SMS
• respondents who received personally addressed letters said that this type of mail outperformed email on all of the attributes that influence a product purchase.

Marketing research firm Roberts Research, which was also involved in the development of the study, is using the results of the research to help their clients achieve more effective marketing communications.

Social mail constitutes only about 5 per cent of all letters in today’s market but interest has been stimulated recently by some of our innovative greetings products and by greeting-cards websites (such as moonpig.com.au) that make sending cards easy and fun.