DM News recently ran this headline: Consumers prefer personalized direct mail  (there's a full link to the article below).

Now I got very excited by this, because I have argued for years that personalisation in direct mail only makes a difference to response rates in a tiny number of very specialist cases.  So I wanted to see where I was going wrong.

So I read with interest...  (I've put the article in italics, just to make it easier to see what is in the original, and what is my commentary)

"Sixty-one percent of consumers in a recent InfoTrends study stated a preference for direct mail, nearly triple the amount who preferred receiving ads via e-mail."

Immediately I am suspicious.  We are talking about direct mail now, not personalisation.  Is the headline misleading?

The study, "The Future of Mail 2007: Direct Mail, Transaction, and 'Transpromotional' Documents," gives details on the U.S. and Canadian markets. It focuses on customer-facing applications such as direct marketing, billing and related issues such as customer support and fulfillment. It investigates consumer behavior and preferences and reviews print provider expectations and plans as well as the plans of those who generate these documents.

Within this category, personalized direct mail with messages and offers designed to reflect the consumer's needs and interests were most favored.

Well that is obvious isn't it.  Send me a piece about the Arsenal and I read it.  Write to me about shoe sales in Chile and I don't.  This has nothing to do with personalisation but about content, but now they are confusing the two.

InfoTrends, Weymouth, MA, a Questex company, is a market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry.

The study also examined adoption of transpromotional documents, which combine marketing messages with transaction information. The survey found high consumer preference for such documents (63 percent), and the study forecasts full-color digital transpromotional pages growing at a 91 percent rate through 2010.

Hmmmm - a preference against what.  A preference for documents about things they are interested in, or a preference for documents that contain personal data?  And what has this got to do with the forecast growth?

Other study highlights:

* In 2005, the North American transaction market consisted of 64.3 billion documents with a value of $120 billion, while 114 billion direct mail pieces (with a retail value of $61.1 billion) were sent.

* Consumers state that only 31 percent of the direct mail they receive contains personalized content that they find useful.

We're back to the confusion again - I can make the case that it is the subject matter not the personalisation that counts - there is nothing here to suggest otherwise.

* A high level of trust exists in the U.S. and Canadian postal services.

* Print providers who serve these markets have strong investment intentions, especially regarding mailing equipment and digital color.

* Not everyone will flock to electronic bill presentment or electronic bill presentment and payment, as just under half of the respondents planned to pay bills online. Security concerns were the main reason consumers did not want to switch to online banking. The study consisted of surveys of 850 adult consumers who pay bills, 456 document owners who are responsible for direct mail and transaction documents and 397 print providers who focus on direct mail and transaction documents.

Now I haven't cut any of this article, just to give the full effect.  There is nothing here that suggests personalisation helps anyone except the printers who make more out of it than if they have a standard non-personalised message.  Once again I have the same old feeling - if personalisation really were that good at raising response rates, there would be hundreds of articles publishing the results.  After all if you were a printer and you wanted to convince the world how good personalisation was, wouldn't you advertise all the research findings, instead of resorting to this load of muddle?

Link to DM News article

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This article is written by Tony Attwood, Chairman of Hamilton House Mailings Ltd.  If you would like to discuss the writing or design of your mailing campaign, or indeed a single mailshot, with Tony, without cost or obligation, just call 01536 399 000, or email Creative@hamilton-house.com   You can also send Tony a copy of your latest advert and he will call you back with his thoughts on how your response rate could be raised - again without cost or obligation.