Love at First Sight? Effects of Direct Mail Design on Consumer Response Behavior

• Activity Number: 507
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and Marketing
• Author(s): Manfred Krafft*+ and Sebastian Feld and Heiko Frenzen and Kay Peters
• Companies: University of Münster and University of Münster and University of Münster and University of Münster
• Keywords: Direct Mail Design ; Consumer Response Behavior ; Panel Data ; Financial Services ; Non-profit Organizations ; Logit Transformation

Abstract

Our study aims to shed light on the fuzzy issue of successful direct mail design and to provide answers to the following questions: (1) What drives consumers to open direct mail pieces, and (2) what induces them to respond to a direct mail offering? Based on a representative sample of 3,000 German households, we investigate the effects of (1) various envelope characteristics on opening behavior, and (2) design characteristics of the envelope content on consumers' retention of direct mail pieces. Retention serves as a surrogate measure for actual response. Campaign volume and total mailing volume of the sender organization are included as covariates. Analyzing 682 campaigns from two industries, we find that the design characteristics, along with mailing volumes, account for more than one fifth (one quarter) of the variance in opening (retention) rate.