At Royal Mail we've always believed in using the power of 1 to 1 communications to build customer relationships. However, technology has transformed marketing communications. The development of email and the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets have changed the way we connect with customers forever. When you want to talk to customers directly you now have many different tools at your disposal and that's a good thing. So we've conducted extensive research to find out how customers prefer businesses to talk to them and we think the results are fascinating.

Our research shows that the core strengths of mail have endured and in some cases grown even stronger, often by driving customers online. Mail is still opened, still valued, still kept and still drives response. Digital has transformed marketing but it hasn't replaced mail for one simple reason. Customers don't want it to. Customers are very clear about what they prefer to receive by mail. They prefer to receive items of substance that they can spend time with and keep. Equally, there are some communications like quick updates that customers prefer to receive via email.

So, complementarity pays. A recent meta-analysis by Peter Field on the IPA Databank reveals that 27% more of the campaigns which delivered high sales performance included mail than did not. He also looked at campaigns which drove high acquisition levels. And 40% more of these included mail than those that didn't. Campaigns with mail achieved over twice (104%) the market share growth when measured against campaigns without mail in the mix.