Are We Paying Attention?
The Challenge of New Media
In the past, the marketing premise was simple: Know your customer and sell to your customer.
Today, with multi-channel marketing venues — email, web, SMS, sponsored links, blogs, viral campaigns, and ambient media — the marketing landscape is vastly different and much more complex.
2004 Research: Target Marketing
In 2004, Group 1 Software polled the top 1000 company marketers in the United Kingdom.
This research showed that marketing offers that accompanied bills, statements and other customer correspondence, typically generated response rates of around 5.5% — not far off the typical direct mail campaign response rates.
However, this return was only achieved when marketing messages were specifically targeted to the recipient's profile.
2007 Research: Attention Spans
As a follow-up to the 2004 poll, in 2007, Group 1 commissioned an independent research effort to gain more insight into the attention span of the average consumer.
This recent poll surveyed over 1000 adults in each of the following countries — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States.
Print Media
Respondents were asked to estimate the amount of time they typically spent reviewing:
- Bank or credit card statements
- Monthly mobile phone bills
- Utility bills
- Direct mail pieces
Electronic Media
The survey also included the amount of attention given to messages received via electronic media, including:
- Bank statements on the Web
- Utility bills on the Web
- Email received from a company of which the respondent was already a customer
- "Cold" prospecting email (this category specifically excluded spam email)
Control Factors
Finally, to put the entire study into context, two controls were also introduced in order to set understandable and real-world parameters:
- Time spent reviewing government correspondence (excluding the tax authorities)
- Time spent reviewing tax correspondence
Unexpected Findings
Bar chart of attention span findings
You would think that most people would devote most of their time and attention to correspondence related to personal taxation — when the tax man calls, most people listen.
Second only to the tax authorities, it was reasonable to suppose that governmental mail — either from federal or local authorities — would garner close scrutiny.
Bank Statements
It was, therefore, very interesting to see that in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, people spend more time looking at their bank statement than they do looking at their tax correspondence.
Government Correspondence
The relatively low attention span devoted to government correspondence should be a wake up call for local, regional and federal authorities. Evidently, communications are not clear or compelling enough if they are regarded with as much attention as a piece of direct mail.
Governments need to begin using attention grabbing tools to promote their message to their constituents.
Common Themes
Despite the variations across the different countries studied, a number of common themes emerged:
- A great deal of attention is paid to monthly statements, especially to financial and mobile phone bills
- Web statements receive significantly less attention than their printed equivalents
- Email emerges as a powerful medium, but principally for communications with existing customers rather than as a customer acquisition tool
- Direct mail remains firmly ahead of "cold" email in terms of the attention it commands
Read Complete White Paper
Download the Attention Span white paper (PDF, 357 KB).