The biggest junk mailer, according to a survey by Neilsen Market Research, is MBNA. The finance company behind credit cards for more than 5,000 organisations sends out 99 million mail shots a year at a cost of £44.5 million. Second on the list is Lloyds TSB with almost 1.8 million pieces of direct mail per week (or 92 million pieces of junk in a year); third is Capital One.

Envelope opening rates

The study, commissoned by Marketing Magazine, suggests that four in every five pieces of addressed junk mail are opened by the recipient and that people are more likely to open mailings from banks than they are likely to open envelopes sent by other types of organisations. Although this is not a particularly surprising finding - a likely explanation is that people open letters from banks in the expectation that they contain important information - it gave Marketing Magazine the opportunity to put some positive spin on the research: "The financial services industry has long been accused of carpet bombing households with hundreds of millions of unwanted credit card and loan offers. Yet the study found consumers are more likely to open those mailings than letters sent by mail order companies and charities.", the magazine writes.

Another finding of the survey is that addressed junk mail elicits a response from only 1 to 3% of recipients. Dispite this, Marketing Magazine believes the cost of a mail shot is still money well-spent because mail-outs increase brand awareness. Even bad publicity is publicity.

Links

• Banks accused over junk mail (timesonline.co.uk)