JICMAIL reports continued uplift in mail’s digital effectiveness in Q1 2026

Print Solutions

JICMAIL, The Joint Industry Currency for Mail, reports that mail continues to drive record levels of digital engagement in Q1 2026, with website visits, account look ups, web searches and app downloads all rising year on year.

Alongside this growth in digital response, JICMAIL has released its full year 2025 Response Rate Tracker data now covering nearly 5000 campaigns.

In Q1 2026 the mail channel continued on its growth trajectory as a ‘Super Touchpoint’ channel: combining high levels of physical engagement with increasingly powerful digital outcomes. 9.4% of mail items prompted a website visit in Q1, a record for the first quarter of the year.

This growth in digital response extends beyond website visits. JICMAIL data shows that account look ups, web searches and app downloads prompted by mail (including direct mail, door drops and business mail) all increased year on year, reinforcing mail’s role as a driver of measurable, performance led outcomes.

Supporting this trend, 56% of all purchases driven by mail were fulfilled online in Q1 2026, a new record since tracking began, underlining the increasingly powerful role that mail plays within omnichannel customer journeys.

Alongside these quarterly results, JICMAIL has announced the release of its full year 2025 Response Rate Tracker dataset, significantly expanding the industry’s understanding of mail effectiveness at a campaign level.

The Response Rate Tracker is a dataset which sits independent of the core JICMAIL panel and consists of anonymous mail campaign performance data submitted by 15 industry organisations. The Response Rate Tracker includes benchmarks for response, return on investment, cost per acquisition (CPA) and average order value (AOV) for cold and warm direct mail and door drops, and, for the first time, partially addressed mail.

Based on nearly 5000 campaigns, this dataset provides advertisers and agencies with robust, campaign level benchmarks that can be used for planning, forecasting and performance validation. Early findings from the 2025 dataset highlight strong performance across the mail channel, including continued growth in both warm and cold retail direct mail response rates (up 26% and 21% year on year respectively). The return on investment of mail ranges from £2.0 for partially addressed mail, up to £11.50 for warm direct mail (ie mail targeting existing customers).

Ian Gibbs, director of data leadership and learning at JICMAIL, said: ‘The Q1 2026 data highlights the continued evolution of mail as a Super Touchpoint channel that seamlessly bridges physical and digital. At the same time, the release of our full year 2025 Response Rate Tracker provides the industry with an unrivalled view of campaign level effectiveness, enabling better planning, benchmarking and optimisation.’

Mark Cross, engagement director at JICMAIL, said: ‘These latest results together with our new geo planning tool and latest response rate tracker, bring to life the unrivalled quality of engagement and effectiveness from mail. A richness not available elsewhere, such as with an outstanding average of 229 seconds spent with catalogues; the highest attention levels to direct mail in GB revealed in Oxford and Cambridge; recycle rates at a hugely impressive 89% and with year on year maintenance of £12+ return on investment for retailers from warm mail and decreasing cost per acquisition from cold. Quite a dashboard of results!’