Direct Mail volume and expenditure continues its rise, according to the latest official figures from the Direct Mail Information Service.
Latest figures for July to September 2003 show that Direct Mail volume was up 5.4% on the same quarter last year to 1.3 billion items.
The volume of business to consumer Direct Mail was up 7.5% whilst business-to-business mail decreased slightly by 1.8%. This decrease continues the downwards trend that has developed since January 2003. However the percentage by which B2B Direct Mail has decreased year on year has become significantly less with each quarter.
Total Direct Mail expenditure for this quarter was £557.3 million - an increase of 0.6% from the same period last year. Of this expenditure, postage made up 44% with £242.6 million while production accounted for 56% at £314.7 million.
Not surprisingly financial services and home shopping remain the largest mailers with volumes of 241 million and 135 million respectively. Year on year financial services has grown by 13.6%, whilst home shopping has shown a slight decrease of 6% on the same quarter in 2002. Home shopping was the only sector to see a decrease in this quarter.
The sectors showing the largest growth since 2002 were the health sector, up nearly 31% to 11.5 million items and the utilities sector, up 26% to 54.2 million items.
Analysis shows that volume growth across all socio-demographic groups continues to rise. In this quarter mailings to both C1 and C2 groupings increased by over 8%.
In the 16-34 age group, receipt declined this quarter by 7.2%, while all the other age categories saw an increase; the largest increase being for the 55-64 age group, up 14.4%.
