‘It’s easier to make decisions if you pigeon-hole every medium as doing only one thing. You get statements such as "direct mail is only good for reaching old people" – when in truth it is fantastically effective when targeting the young. When all these lazy assumptions build up, the exciting media palette which makes our business fun gets smaller – and you end up with only the primary colours.’

Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman, Ogilvy Group UK

Read Rory's 10 reasons to make mail your medium...

‘When three people get together to start an advertising agency, what’s the first thing they do? Write letters. Lots of them. To all their old clients and to many potential new ones. They use mail because it’s personal, it’s persuasive and it works. How peculiar, then, that once they are under way they so rarely advise their clients to use what was their own first medium of choice.’ 

Patrick Collister, editor, Directory

‘If you can turn transactional mail such as a bill or statement into something more than the just financial information, it becomes part
of your customer touch point. In many ways, Barclaycard know more about me than my wife. They know what I’m buying, where I’m going, how often I eat out, how often I go up to Manchester City
to watch them play football. Could they be doing more with that information? I think they could. Can we be helping that? Absolutely.’

Listen to Mark explain the role of transactional mail...