Canada Post’s “A Bias for Action” – Direct Mail Research & Response Measures: Neuromarketing As Mail Marketing

On July 31st, Canada Post published its newest whitepaper, A Bias for Action. This publication shares the results and conclusions from Canada Post’s recent neuromarketing project with True Impact Marketing. Naturally, the postal corporation sought to explore the effectiveness of direct mail through science.

For our first related blog post, let’s discuss the general cognitive appeal of direct mail advertising.

The term cognitive load relates to how easily a message is understood. To quote Canada Post’s whitepaper and True Impact Marketing’s founder and CEO Diana Lucaci:

“Neuromarketers measure their subject’s cognitive load, or mental effort required to understand a stimulus. Cognitive load is highly related to working memory performance. ‘In neuromarketing, we aim for a medium to low cognitive load,’ explains Lucaci. ‘This matters because when a message enters the mind easily and makes sense right away, you’re much more likely to encode it into memory. That said, we always need to look at cognitive load in the context of motivation. If it’s easy to understand but is not motivating, the stimulus is not likely to drive in-market success.'”

From these cognitive conversations, Canada Post walked into its direct mailing study with 1 hypothesis for 4 response measures.

Hypothesis: Direct mail is more action-oriented than digital media, surpassing its response across measures…

1. Direct mail is easier to understand and more memorable than digital media
It requires 21% less cognitive effort to process and elicits a much higher brand recall.

2. Direct mail is far more persuasive than digital media
Its motivation response is 20% higher – even more so if it appeals to more senses beyond touch.

3. Direct mail is visually processed quicker than digital media
When considered in concert with its higher motivation and lower cognitive load, this suggests it gets the message across faster.

4. Direct mail is more likely to drive behavior than digital media
Surpassing the important motivation-to-cognitive load ratio threshold of 1.

The results of this neuromarketing study validated Canada Post’s hypothesis that direct mail marketing is more effective at driving consumer action than digital advertising. To learn more about this new neuromarketing mail research, our direct mail specialists at Troi Mailing Services would love to share the story at 1-866-486-0423.

We hope you enjoy more of these valuable results from A Bias for Action –read it here!