This just in: People really love their mail

The personal connection combined with haptics—the science of touch—makes mail a marketing no-brainer.

Touch is the very first way we communicate with the world as a child.

But while it obviously isn’t the last, the sense of touch remains essential to the way we receive and transmit information. In fact, it’s one of the most important ways we have to experience the world we live in.

So what do we do when the world we live in is momentarily void of touch?

We send some mail.

Direct mail has always worked for a myriad of reasons, but in these strange times it adds an extra layer of comfort and connection while we’re avoiding seeing people, going places, and touching, well, anything. The tangibility of high-quality paper packs an even more serious punch while consumers are spending most of their time at home. And people really just look forward to getting their mail.

• 76% of customers say that receiving direct mail leaves a long-lasting impression on their everyday lives and helps them recall advertising later on (“The value of getting personalization right—or wrong—is multiplying,” McKinsey & Company, 2021)
• 78% of consumers are more likely to consider purchasing from brands that personalize (Ibid.)

Popular science author David Sax wrote a piece in Sappi’s Reach Out and Touch book on haptics, and in it he muses about how analog touch is making a comeback in a digital world. Whether it’s board games, cassette tapes, print books, or vinyl records, people are going back to (or discovering for the first time) the power of touch.

49.61 million vinyl albums were sold in the US in 2023, which is the highest level since the early 1990s (“2023 U.S. Vinyl Sales Report,” Nielsen Music/MRC Data, January 2023).

Sax’s argument matches up with ours—there’s a level of emotion that tangible experiences bring that digital communications just can’t match. And that’s why we relish those moments so much more.