The figure is from Thomson's own effectiveness study, which is separate from the expenditure barometer. Thomson said that the proportion of recipients who retained or responded to a piece of direct mail improved by 27% in 2004 to 2.4%.
At the same time, direct mail's share of total UK adspend fell to 13%, or £1.37bn, in 2004. This compares with £1.49bn in 2003 when it took a 15% share.
The only client sectors to increase spending on direct mail were the automotive and government/utilities sectors.
In addition, Thomson said it saw a slowdown in the list market, with list owners and brokers finding it difficult to push through annual price increases.
KPMG and Thomson said that possible reasons for the drop included the fact that more sophisticated targeting is reducing the size of mailings.
Other reasons may be: a contraction in the financial services industry, which accounts for a third of all direct mail volumes; industry consolidation leading to a reduction in the number of mailers; budget-cutting by direct marketing departments; and the impact of the internet on traditional offline channels such as mail order catalogues.
The Thomson/KPMG research tallies with numbers released by the Direct Mail Information Service last week, which showed the volume of mailings from the financial services sector decreased 8.1% in 2004, while the volume from the utilities sector increased 11.6% and government mailing volume increased by 14.3%.
Jo Howard-Brown, DMIS managing director, said: "The reduction in volumes here fits in with a trend we are picking up from major industry players, namely that quite a number of financial services companies are moving to a more targeted consumer approach."
The DMIS calculated that direct mail expenditure rose slightly from £2.467bn in 2003 to £2.469bn in 2004.
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