Direct Mail Marketing #7 – from Rich Boland, Client Services, Precision Group
What 5,000 Australians told us about the letterbox in 2025
The VMA’s Open Up to Mail research, unpacked for marketers planning 2026 campaigns
The Visual Media Association’s Open Up to Mail initiative is now the most current and most comprehensive research on the role of mail in Australian life. It is also the most useful piece of audience evidence Australian marketers have had in years. Independent insights firm The Source ran the study. The sample covered more than 5,000 Australians, plus a parallel sample of 1,000 New Zealanders in the broader research. In short, it does what the older Accenture Mail’s Role in the Digital Age study did for an earlier moment — but with 2025 data, fresh categories of insight, and a much sharper read on the digital fatigue Australians now openly report.
This article walks through what the research found, and how to put it to work on a live campaign.
For an overview of how Precision Group supports Australian organisations with end-to-end mailing, see our mailing house services. The full Open Up to Mail initiative and ongoing research releases are available at openuptomail.com.au.
The headline finding: a measurable shift back to the letterbox
The headline of the 2025 Open Up to Mail research is unusually direct. Australians are tired of digital communication. As a result, they are returning to the physical letterbox as a more reliable and more trusted source of information. Importantly, the numbers behind that finding are specific, and they matter for any marketer planning a campaign in 2026. Three quarters of Australians agree that mail delivered by the local postie is an essential part of society. Two thirds say the letterbox is needed in today’s world, and they enjoy the ritual of walking out to check it. Around 90% of Australians check their letterbox weekly, and that figure has grown since the 2024 report. On top of that, nine in ten Australians say they are experiencing digital fatigue. These are not aspirational statements about how Australians wish they engaged with media. Rather, they are reported behaviours and lived sentiment, captured at scale. Together, they describe a country in the middle of a quiet correction back toward physical channels.
Why the letterbox is winning trust
The trust story in the Open Up to Mail data rests on two pillars: the volume of digital fatigue Australians now openly report, and the role mail plays as a localised hub for trust. Consider the context. Australia ranks 13th globally for breached online accounts. Inboxes are overflowing with phishing attempts. Social feeds are increasingly seen as unreliable narrators. Against that backdrop, a piece of mail in the letterbox is not just communication. It is communication that survives the credibility test. In particular, the research found that 44% of Australians are more likely to trust a local business if they have seen the brand in their letterbox as well as online. The two channels work together; neither replaces the other. However, adding the physical channel materially changes the trust the consumer extends to the brand.
Mail does work that digital cannot reach
Perhaps the most important finding in the Open Up to Mail report concerns reach. Specifically, the letterbox is the only mass communication channel that genuinely reaches everyone. Around 7 million Australians struggle to afford home internet. Yet every household has a letterbox. This matters for the five sectors the VMA singles out as relying on mail to do essential connecting work: health services, charities, government agencies, financial services and food and grocery retailers. For these organisations, the equity-of-reach argument alone justifies a serious mail program. For commercial brands, the same dynamic shows up differently. It appears as audiences digital channels chronically under-deliver against — older customers, regional customers, and the long tail of households who simply do not engage online at the rates marketing dashboards assume they do.
Categories where mail demonstrably drives action
The 2025 research is unusually rich on the categories of mail that drive measurable consumer action. Three findings stand out for any campaign planning conversation.
- Targeted unaddressed flyers drive home services action. In fact, 77% of respondents have been prompted to undertake home maintenance after receiving an unaddressed flyer or advertisement.
- Mail consistently uncovers new commercial opportunities. Nine in ten Australians have discovered new deals, products or services because of what arrived in their mailbox, and three in four have taken some form of action as a result.
- Local government mail is genuinely preferred. Specifically, 61% of Australians prefer to receive local government material via the letterbox, particularly for community matters and emergency communications.
For retail, food and grocery brands, the research also found that printed catalogues rank near the top of channels where Australians notice food and grocery advertising. Notably, this is a category where digital media spend has grown materially in recent years. The Open Up to Mail data suggests the catalogue is doing more work than the spend ratio would imply.
Charity mail
The Open Up to Mail program has now run a dedicated session on the role of mail in the charity sector. The findings are consistent with what experienced fundraisers already know: mail does emotional work email simply cannot replicate. To put numbers on it, 25% of Australians and New Zealanders have received charity mail in the past 12 months. One third of recipients keep charity letters for an extended period — typically in a to-do pile, or alongside personal letters. In VMA CEO Kellie Northwood’s words “…charity correspondence in the letterbox enables more emotional connection, is the most trusted form of communication in the charity context, and stays in the home for longer…” For a sector where average gift size and donor lifetime value are the metrics that matter, those characteristics are commercial, not sentimental.
How to use Open Up to Mail data on a real campaign
The most useful way to read the Open Up to Mail research is as a planning document, not a defence document. With that in mind, here are three practical applications:
- Defend mail in budget conversations – use the digital-fatigue and trust findings. The 9-in-10 digital fatigue figure and the 44% local-business-trust figure are among the most cite-able numbers in Australian marketing research right now. Better still, they sit on the public record.
- Defend mail to under-served audiences – use the equity-of-reach finding in conversations about audiences your digital channels under-perform against. For local government, charities, health services and financial services, the 90% weekly letterbox-checking figure closes the digital divide argument before it starts.
- Defend mail at the channel-mix level – use the category-specific findings. The 77% home-maintenance prompt figure and the 9-in-10 new-deals discovery figure are concrete proof points. They show that mail is driving the sort of action marketers are typically chasing through paid digital.
Open Up to Mail and Accenture, side by side
The VMA’s Open Up to Mail research and the earlier Accenture / Australia Post study are best read as complementary insights. The Accenture work gives marketers a causal model — the trust, tactility and affirmation framework. By contrast, the VMA work gives marketers current, large-sample data on what Australians are actually doing with mail in 2025. Where the two diverge, the Open Up to Mail figures should be treated as the primary source of truth. They are more recent, larger in sample, and built specifically for the Australian and New Zealand context. In practice, the two reinforce each other.
Talk to us about your next direct mail campaign
Precision Group plans and produces direct mail campaigns informed by current Australian audience research, including the VMA’s Open Up to Mail findings. To apply these insights to your next campaign, talk to our mailing house team at info@thepg.com.au, or visit thepg.com.au/services/mail to learn more.
Sources and further reading:
- Visual Media Association, Open Up to Mail initiative, research conducted by The Source on 5,000+ Australians and 1,000+ New Zealanders, 2024–2025 — openuptomail.com.au.
- Print21, ‘Survey reveals return to letterbox as digital trust wanes’, November 2025.
- Sprinter, ‘Five key lessons from the VMA’s Open Up To Mail webinar’, December 2025.
- Accenture for Australia Post, ‘Mail’s Role in the Digital Age’, 2020.
- Photo by Alessandro Bianchi on Unsplash.
