US households read 60 per cent of advertising mail from companies they already buy from, and 26 per cent from strangers (USPS, 2024). In the UK, mail to existing customers drew a 6.3 per cent response, against 1 per cent for cold mail (JICMAIL, 2023 to 2025). No large study measures handwritten business cards on their own, but a handwritten request roughly doubled replies in two separate trials.
Every number on this page links to the study or report it comes from, with its year. Where a figure is widely repeated but we could not reach the original, we say so and leave it out. Each section ends with what the number does not tell you.
How much advertising mail do people read?
Seven pieces in ten get at least some attention. In the USPS Household Diary Study for 2024, someone in the household read 44 per cent of advertising pieces, looked at another 22 per cent without reading, and set aside 4 per cent for later. Only 30 per cent went in the bin unread (USPS Household Diary Study, FY 2024).
The same study splits the numbers by who sent the mail. Mail to existing customers was read 60 per cent of the time, and for 15 per cent of pieces the household said it was considering a response. Mail to prospects was read 26 per cent of the time, with 2 per cent considering a response. Across all advertising mail, 44 per cent was read and 9 per cent was being considered for a response (Table 5.5).
UK figures come from JICMAIL, which has a panel of about 1,100 households record every piece of mail for 28 days. In the second quarter of 2026, a direct mail item was picked up 4.4 times, stayed in the home 7.4 days and held 151 seconds of attention in total. Business mail scored 4.9 interactions, 8.9 days and 197 seconds (JICMAIL, Q2 2026). In the same quarter, 9.5 per cent of all mail items prompted a website visit and 6 per cent prompted a purchase.
What these numbers do not mean. Both are self-reported: a household notes what it did, which is not the same as a tracked response. "Read" also covers a glance at a coupon. And neither study separates handwritten mail from printed mail.
What is a good direct mail response rate in 2026?
For mail to existing customers, around 6 per cent; for cold mail to people who do not know you, around 1 per cent. Those are the averages across nearly 5,000 UK campaigns in the JICMAIL Response Rate Tracker, which uses advertisers' own measured results rather than a survey (JICMAIL Response Rate Tracker 2026).
The tracker's 2023 to 2025 averages:
- Warm direct mail (existing customers): 6.3 per cent response and an ROI of £8.80.
- Cold direct mail (prospects): 1 per cent response and an ROI of £2.10.
- Format: among retailers mailing their own customers in 2025, A4 mailers drew 9.6 per cent, A5 6.6 per cent and postcards 3.5 per cent (634 campaigns).
- Trend: warm and cold direct mail response rates both rose by over 20 per cent in 2025.
In the US, the usual source is the ANA's Response Rate Report. The ANA's own release on the 2021 edition says marketers who sent letter-sized envelopes reported a 112 per cent ROI, ahead of SMS at 102 per cent and email at 93 per cent. For mail to house lists, postcards did best at 92 per cent (ANA, January 2022). That edition is a survey of 581 qualified responses, so these are what marketers reported, not measured results.
You will often see "9 per cent for house lists and 4.9 per cent for prospects" credited to the 2018 ANA/DMA report. The report itself is behind ANA membership (ANA), and we could not check those numbers at the source, so we do not rely on them here.
What these numbers do not mean. "Response" is whatever each advertiser counted: a purchase, a donation, a visit. The figures are UK campaigns, mostly from large senders, and none of them isolates handwriting.
What does a customer cost to win by mail?
It depends on the sector and on whether the person already knows you. In the JICMAIL tracker, a cold retail mailing cost £145 per acquisition, while a warm retail mailing to existing customers cost £30. For mail-order businesses the gap was £65 against £29 (JICMAIL Response Rate Tracker 2026).
More sector figures from the same report, for cold direct mail (2022 to 2025 average):
- Financial and insurance services: 0.8 per cent response, £106 per acquisition.
- Charity: 0.7 per cent response, £161 per acquisition, with an average gift of £27.
- Medical: 0.4 per cent response, £634 per acquisition, with an average order of £1,683.
What these numbers do not mean. A high cost per acquisition is fine when each customer is worth a lot, as the medical figures show. Compare cost per acquisition with what a customer is worth to you, not with another sector. JICMAIL only shows a figure when at least 10 campaigns reported it.
Does a handwritten note get more replies than print?
When the handwriting is a personal request, yes, in the studies we could trace. A handwritten sticky note roughly doubled survey returns in a 2005 experiment and again in a 2013 government trial. A hand-signed signature on a printed letter, by contrast, made no measurable difference. What seems to matter is a request that feels personal, not ink on its own.
The sticky-note experiment is Randy Garner's, in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (2005). Packets with a handwritten Post-it request came back 76 per cent of the time, against 36 per cent with no note. Ireland's Revenue Commissioners then tested it on 2,000 businesses in a randomised trial: after 15 working days, 36 per cent of those who got a handwritten Post-it had replied, against 19.2 per cent of those who did not (Behavioural Insights Team, 2013).
The counter-example is a randomised trial of 3,799 surveys sent to UK obstetricians. Letters with a hand-written signature got 79.1 per cent back; letters with a scanned, printed signature got 78.4 per cent. The authors found "no detectable difference" (McKenzie-McHarg and others, BMC Health Services Research, 2005).
A number we could not trace. Many sites say "99 per cent of handwritten mail gets opened" and some credit the USPS Household Diary Study. We read the FY 2024 edition and found no measure of handwritten mail or open rates in it, so we leave that number out.
Why does physical mail stay in memory?
Studies commissioned by postal services find that people remember a physical piece better than a digital one. In Canada Post's 2015 study of 270 people, 75 per cent could name the brand after seeing a mail piece, against 44 per cent after a digital ad. Mail also took 21 per cent less mental effort to process (Canada Post, A Bias for Action, 2015).
A study for the USPS Office of Inspector General with Temple University found the same pattern. People took in digital ads faster but spent more time with physical ones. A week later, they remembered the physical ads "more quickly and confidently" (USPS OIG, 2015).
Royal Mail's research found that 57 per cent of people said receiving mail made them feel more valued. 39 per cent said they had a place in the home where they put mail on display (Royal Mail MarketReach, The Private Life of Mail, 2015).
What these numbers do not mean. All three were paid for by postal operators, which sell mail. They measure memory and feeling in a lab or survey, not sales. The Canada Post copy we link is hosted by the paper industry group Two Sides, as we could not find it on Canada Post's own site.
How rare is a personal letter now?
Very. In 2024 the average US household received 3.4 letters or invitations from friends or relatives in the whole year, down from 8.4 in 2014. It received 15.5 greeting cards, down from 23.9 (USPS Household Diary Study, FY 2024). Households sent fewer than two personal letters each in 2024, 78 per cent fewer than ten years before.
That scarcity is the case for a handwritten card. A note that looks personal now competes with about one personal letter every three or four months, not with a full mailbox.
What this does not mean. Rarity gets a card noticed. It does not make a generic message land. A printed card in a script font is still a printed card, and most people can tell.
Do people underrate a thank-you note?
Yes. In Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley's 2018 experiments, people who wrote gratitude letters expected recipients to feel less surprised, less happy and more awkward than recipients actually reported. Writers guessed 6.0 out of 10 for surprise at getting the letter; recipients said 7.9. Writers guessed 3.0 for awkwardness; recipients said 2.0.
Those figures are from the first experiment, in which 80 recipients replied to letters written by business-school students (Kumar and Epley, Psychological Science, 2018). Later experiments in the same paper found the same gap, and people who expected more awkwardness were less likely to write at all (University of Chicago News).
What this does not mean. The letters were personal, and the senders and recipients knew each other. The study says nothing about a business sending a card to a customer it has never spoken to.
How should you use these numbers?
Use them to set a starting guess, then measure your own. The research agrees on two things: people read mail from senders they know, and a note that is clearly personal gets more replies. It does not tell you what a handwritten card will do for your customers. A simple test will.
Send cards to half of a group, such as a month of new customers, and nothing to the other half. Compare repeat orders, renewals or replies after 60 days. Our guide to post-purchase thank-you cards works through the cost per order, and handwritten notes in sales has 24 notes to start from. If you are choosing who writes them, our comparison of handwritten card services lists prices, postage and turnaround from each company's own page.
MailMyCard writes each card with a real pen and posts it with tracking, so you can see when a card in a test arrived. The For business page has volume prices, and the developer docs show how to send a card from a CRM, a shop or a spreadsheet when a customer qualifies.
Sources
All checked on 1 October 2026.
- United States Postal Service, The Household Diary Study: Mail Use and Attitudes in FY 2024 (June 2025), filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission: prc.arkcase.com
- JICMAIL, Q2 2026 quarterly results: jicmail.org.uk
- JICMAIL, Response Rate Tracker Master Results 2026 (4,939 campaigns): jicmail.org.uk
- ANA, "New ANA Study Shows Marketers Still Favor Email for Direct Ads" (January 2022), on the Response Rate Report 2021: ana.net
- ANA/DMA, 2018 Response Rate Report (members only): ana.net
- Garner, R. (2005), "Post-It Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence", Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Irish Revenue (2013), both summarised by the Behavioural Insights Team
- McKenzie-McHarg, K. and others (2005), "Effect on survey response rate of hand written versus printed signature on a covering letter", BMC Health Services Research: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Canada Post (2015), A Bias for Action: The neuroscience behind the response-driving power of direct mail, copy hosted by Two Sides: twosidesna.org
- USPS Office of Inspector General (2015), Enhancing the Value of Mail: The Human Response, RARC-WP-15-012: uspsoig.gov
- Royal Mail MarketReach (2015), The Private Life of Mail: royalmailwholesale.com
- Kumar, A. and Epley, N. (2018), "Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation", Psychological Science 29(9): doi.org
- University of Chicago News (September 2018), "People underestimate the value of sending letters of appreciation": news.uchicago.edu
