Forward by Richard Madden, Group Strategy Director, Bartle Bogle Hegarty

This paper is essential reading for anyone who wants to grow the value of their brand and their business.

The reason is simple. What we used to refer to as the digital revolution is now just business as usual. As a result, brands are now the sum of the experiences they create for customers. And the winning marketer is the magician who can somehow make the whole greater than that sum.

I use the word ‘magician’ deliberately. Because brilliant customer experience is the result of imagination as much as it is science. Let me explain.

One goal of the customer experience designer is to eliminate friction from the customer experience while maximising sales conversion.

This is a noble aim, as any user of a dysfunctional website or inefficient contact centre can attest to. It is also a commercially vital one, as any marketer who has modelled the dramatic impact of just a 1% increase in downstream conversion knows only too well.

But removing friction from the customer experience only takes us so far. Because when every brand in a category relies on identical tools and techniques to achieve the same end, the ultimate result is a narrowing of the difference between customers’ experiences of brand A and brand B.

Good communications build both short and long-term value for brands. And it follows that any customer experience that aspires to be greater than the sum of its parts should also do both.

A great customer experience delivers an immediate sales return by removing friction and frustration from customers’ interaction with the brand. But it also delivers more: an interaction that is deeper, more engaging, and thus more memorable than that offered by the competition, with greater long-term brand preference the result.

My key take-away from this paper is that the unique advantage of mail within the customer experience is the power it gives marketers to grow both short and long-term value for their brands and businesses.

As the research shows, over a 12-month period 38% of consumers bought or ordered as a direct result of receiving mail.1 Targeted letterbox media also multiplies the marketing efficiency of other channels.

So, mail drives immediate demand and makes buying easier. This much we always knew. But what may surprise you is that it also has remarkable long-term effects on brand preference.

70% of consumers say that mail makes them feel more valued by a brand than email.3 Its very tactility makes brand experiences richer and more memorable, with the result that 49% more consumers recall receiving a piece of mail than they do an email. Perhaps most impressively of all, neuroscience reveals that the brain responds more strongly to mail than to social media or email.

Take my advice. Invest a few minutes of your day digesting this guide. Download the accompanying customer experience planning tool. Ask yourself and, if you have one, ask your agency about how you can incorporate mail into your customer experience more effectively. And if they can’t give you an answer, talk to one that can.

Because, as more and more businesses are discovering, experience is everything.