In 2026, direct marketing finds itself at a crossroads…
With Royal Mail introducing a substantial increase in postage rates – landing at a point when many programmes are already under pressure – brands that rely heavily on mail are being forced into a hard conversation: how do we protect performance when the cost of simply showing up in the letterbox has jumped overnight?
The temptation is to respond with blunt instruments: cut volume, trim budgets, reduce frequency, but when you pull those levers without a plan, you don’t just cut waste, you cut muscle and create more damage in the longer term.
The more effective response is more strategic (and, frankly, more grown-up) audience planning. Don’t think of it as a nice-to-have, but as the discipline that turns a cost shock into a competitive advantage, delivering more impact from fewer mailings and greater return from every pound invested.
The real problem isn’t postage. It’s precision
Channels like direct mail have delivered results for decades, sometimes despite how it has been used. In many organisations, volume has historically masked inefficiencies: broad audiences, legacy segments retained “just in case”, and targeting decisions driven by habit rather than evidence and Royal Mail’s price hike removes that safety net.
The economics are now uncompromising, you can’t afford to mail everyone, but you can still afford – and can profit from – mailing the right people. This is exactly where audience planning pays for itself. Because it isn’t about mailing less for the sake of it; it’s about understanding who genuinely drives response and value, then putting your budget behind those audiences with confidence, driving profit in the long term.
Why this moment matters most for charities and mail-order brands
The groups most exposed to the price rise are also those who can least afford wasted spend.
Charities often operate with fixed fundraising targets and tight budgets, while relying on supporter mailings to sustain income and long-term engagement, this is heightened further by diminishing pools of loyal supporters who have been the lifeblood of these programs for so long.
Mail-order and catalogue-led brands depend on high-volume mailing cycles as a core sales engine and those higher volumes have meant they’ve previously been able to absorb the steepest cost increases through economies of scale, this increase has meant that comfort blanket has been ripped away.
In both cases, the challenge isn’t whether direct mail works, it’s whether the current approach is efficient enough to perform in a higher-cost world.
Direct mail is still powerful – but now it must be smarter
One of the most important shifts in recent years is that marketers are no longer reliant on “trust me, it works” arguments.
Independent industry measurement now frames mail as a high-attention channel, capable of attracting attention, deepening relationships, and influencing household behaviour in ways many other channels struggle to replicate. When that attention strength is combined with the precision of robust audience planning, the result isn’t just protected ROI – it’s often improved performance across both short and long term metrics.
From volume-led to value-led
At its core, audience planning replaces broad mailing with a more commercial mindset:
- Who is most likely to respond now – not historically
- Who generates real value, not just activity
- Where are the hotspots where performance over-indexes
- Which segments can you safely suppress without harming outcomes
This is the practical difference between cutting back and optimising, cutting back is driven by fear, optimising is driven by strategy.
Adding weight and certainty through trusted planning frameworks
If direct mail is to earn its place in a tougher market, it must be planned like the rest of the communications mix: audience-first and channel-smart.
Modern touchpoint planning frameworks help marketers understand how people engage with media across their lives, allowing mail to be deployed where it adds the most value, rather than where it has always existed.
Richer audience profiling tools further strengthen this shift by combining demographics, behaviours, attitudes and media consumption, enabling segments that are genuinely actionable rather than theoretical.
Turning precision into practical action
For many organisations, the fastest way to unlock efficiency is to combine first-party data with modelling that identifies where response is most likely, and where it isn’t. Whilst behaviour, attitude and sentiment are targeting strategies that have been able to be applied through audience planning tools like TGI or survey data – where motivation can be influenced by the chance of a incentive to complete – they are often retrospective and out of date by the time you’re able to activate. Tools like Herdify and Starcount allow us to identify real-world clusters of influence and response, allowing organisations to focus spend on areas where marketing efforts are more likely to land in a receptive context, reducing wastage and increasing the likelihood that each item drives action.
The supply chain matters too
Audience planning is the backbone, but it also gives organisations permission to challenge everything that sits around it. When you know exactly who you’re mailing, and why, you can make sharper decisions about formats, packs and production without guesswork. The outcome isn’t just lower cost, it’s a more resilient, better-engineered communications program.
Working with, rather than against, your partners allows greater impact. Combining collective mindset, audience planning, customer intent with the endless personalisation opportunities that direct mail can provide allows brands to deliver against the holy grail of marketing: right place, right time and right message.
The bottom line: mail smarter, not harder
The price hike isn’t just a cost problem, it’s a moment to overcome with strategy and look beyond optimisation.
Success in this new landscape won’t come from abandoning direct mail, or from maintaining volume and hoping the numbers still add up. It will come from treating audience planning as a strategic discipline, prioritising value over volume, and planning mail as part of a broader communications planning ecosystem.
Communicate smarter, not harder. The letterbox remains a powerful place to earn attention, it’s just no longer a place for guesswork.
