Printed bills beat web for customer attention

A new report by Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software reveals that in the UK, France and the US, people spend more time looking at their bank statement than they do looking at their tax correspondence.

The relatively low attention span devoted to government correspondence may be seen as carrying an important message for local and regional authorities (who make up the larger proportion of such correspondence).

Most people would imagine that one would devote most attention to correspondence about personal taxation, in that it directly affects one's disposable income.

Equally, it is reasonable to suppose that governmental matters - especially from local or regional authorities - would get close scrutiny in that they affect the recipient's home or the environment in which they live.

Andrew Greenyer, VP International Marketing at Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software, commented: "Evidently, communications are not sufficiently clear or compelling if they are only commanding not so very much more attention than a piece of direct mail.

"This could be something of a wake-up call for government to start using some of the attention-grabbing techniques of the commercial world".

Web statements receive significantly less attention than their printed equivalents - attention which also may be fragmented across the month.

Therefore banks, credit card issuers, mobile telecoms companies and utilities may be well advised NOT to actively migrate customers to the economies of web self-service, but instead concentrate on generating additional income through advertising on printed bills and statements, whether through additional cross-sales, or through charging an affinity partner.

Greenyer added: "There has been much debate over the years about the demise of print with the rise of new media, and yet a great deal of attention is paid to monthly statements, especially financial and mobile telecoms.

"This means that any such organisation that is not using this 'touchpoint' as a means of putting targeted marketing offers in front of the customer is simply wasting valuable sales opportunities.

"There is evidently also great scope for monetising the attention that recipients pay to their statements.

"Suitable affinity partners may be allowed, for a fee, to occupy the advertising slot on a statement and/or insert a leaflet.

"If such partners are also required to develop offers exclusive to the statement issuer, then the issuer can also gain brand value and customer retention benefits".

In the UK, customers spent more than five minutes studying printed tax and bank correspondence and between three and four minutes looking at the equivalent information on the web.

They studied printed direct mail for two and a half minutes but cold emails kept their attention for less than a minute while emails from existing companies were looked at for two minutes 15 seconds.

Figures were similar across the other markets covered by the research: Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the US.

Email emerges as a powerful medium, but principally for communications with existing customers rather than as a customer acquisition tool.

This study provides statistical confirmation for the voice of some pundits who have long predicted that email would become focused on existing customer management.

Direct mail remains firmly ahead of cold email in terms of the recipient attention it can command.

Given the universal reach of direct mail, plus its relative lack of legislative restriction compared with email, it is likely that the medium will retain its key place in the marketer's armoury.

Over 1,000 consumers were interviewed via web survey in each of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United States, during May/June 2007.

Respondents were asked to estimate the typical amount of time that they spent looking at a range of documents, from their monthly bank statement to the direct mail they received.

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