Unlock effectiveness across the customer journey

Over the last year, the language of JICMAIL's Super Touchpoints has been gaining traction, including references during Andrew Tindall and Mark Ritson’s Creative Dividend paper at Cannes. This reflects an increasingly disconnected ecosystem, where consumer attention is atomised across low-attention environments and marketers and planners need better frameworks to cut through and connect experiences across the customer journey.

JICMAIL's Super Touchpoints is such a framework: a collaborative, effectiveness-first approach that identifies high-performing channels and touchpoints delivering disproportionately strong results. We encourage planners to embrace this thinking and experiment towards the improved business effects on offer.

Back in late 2024, JICMAIL (the joint industry currency for Mail) convened an industry group to develop this approach, based on evaluating our Super Touchpoints. We’ve been delighted with its reception-from wider endorsement through to collaborative roundtables featuring Direct Line Group, Carat and VCCP.

Building the case for the approach

Most recently, in partnership with the DMA, we conducted major analysis across the DMA Effectiveness Databank (based on 2,000 DMA Award-winning campaigns), making a strong business case for the value of our Super Touchpoint planning.

This work links strengths of our Super Touchpoints thinking to business, brand and response effects, while recognising the role that touchpoint quantity, quality and synchronicity play in driving results.

The opportunity for improvement is compelling:

• JICMAIL Super Touchpoint channels outperform channel averages for Business Effectiveness by 25%
• For acquiring new customers, effectiveness is optimised at 10+ channels
• For retention marketing, effectiveness peaks at 6+ channels, led by owned
• Different Super Touchpoint strengths generate different effects - for example, campaigns leveraging trust deliver 3x brand effects and 36% more business effects
• There is significant headroom for growth in multi-channel campaigns, where only 55-59% display at least one of six key JICMAIL Super Touchpoint strengths
• Channels such as Mail, TV, Owned, OOH and radio over-index for these strengths, with combinations such as TV + Door Drops, TV + Direct Mail, and Social + Door Drops delivering strong short-term and long-term effects

Creating time and space for better critical thinking in time-starved planning routines is now a priority.

JICMAIL's Super Touchpoints aligns with findings from effectiveness leaders such as Les Binet (in his Go Big or Go Home presentation at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference), as well as Grace Kite’s ‘lots of littles’, further developed by Tom Roach. It offers a practical way to implement this thinking and disrupt herd behaviours in the market.

Our latest report with the DMA applied a JICMAIL Super Touchpoint checklist-using a STEP score (Super Touchpoints Evaluation Points) to the DMA Effectiveness Databank. This revealed how different strengths generate different effects, bringing focus to both the quality and quantity of channels.

Those with JICMAIL Super Touchpoint strengths offer the ‘gold dust’ of effectiveness: creative, emotionally engaging, well-targeted and synchronised communications that are insight-driven, measurable and deliver full-funnel impact.

Best practice measurement is a universal driver of effectiveness

'The Value of Super Touchpoints Planning', JICMAIL/DMA report 

Trust remains a critical factor, strongly correlating with brand effects. Marketing communications that use best-practice measurement - such as MMM, uplift studies and brand tracking - deliver 30% more Response Effects, 11% more Brand Effects and 44% more Business Effects. Campaigns in the top quartile of creativity scores (as judged by DMA Awards) generate 18% more brand effects and 25% more business effects, reinforcing the case made in System1’s Creative Dividend report.

The power of our Super Touchpoints in practice comes from unifying thinking across media, creative and customer data, while going deeper into the consumer experience across the full journey. It helps planners evaluate the audience value exchange across acquisition and retention, spanning paid, owned and earned touchpoints.

Identifying the potential in under-used properties

At this more granular level, differences emerge. Every channel contains a range of touchpoints, activated through context, mood, moments and need states. Some are better measured than others, while the walled gardens of major digital platforms often mask variations in touchpoint quality - too often left unchallenged.

These complexities become clearer when viewed as a system of interdependent touchpoints. Some act as “anchor” or force-multiplier touchpoints which, when orchestrated well, deliver disproportionate outcomes. and with synchronicity they ignite multiplier effects and unlock further growth.

These powerful properties are often underinvested in. The top-performing touchpoint combinations demonstrate a sweet spot - delivering both strong short-term response and long-term business effects.

Continuous testing of underutilised combinations will help crystallise the opportunity. For example, Mail and Social, powered by intelligent AI, can combine physical and digital touchpoints for personalisation at scale. Other opportunities include driving in-home engagement through addressable TV and Mail. More broadly, adjusting spend towards higher-attention, higher-trust environments-supported by best-practice measurement-will improve visibility of compounding effects across the funnel.

Looking for full-funnel effectiveness

'The Value of Super Touchpoints Planning', JICMAIL/DMA report 

Practical steps to implementing authentic multi-channel marketing

Putting this authentic omnichannel thinking into practice is not without barriers. These include limited evaluation capability, a cultural bias towards digital-only planning, and siloed budgets and expertise. Overcoming them requires refreshed collaboration across the industry, with greater integration of disciplines, processes and shared data.

Gold-standard data-such as that provided by the JICs-will be critical. Encouragingly, some client and agency structures are already moving in this direction. In the meantime, there are practical steps we can all take with JICMAIL's Super Touchpoint planning.

Our report outlines an industry-endorsed action plan for improving multi-channel effectiveness. These include: applying JICMAIL's Super Touchpoint principles across paid, owned and earned channels; holding collaborative roundtables to encourage joined-up thinking (which we are happy to convene); incorporating JICMAIL's Super Touchpoints into evaluation frameworks; creating AI-assisted integrations of gold-standard data (with a ‘fast start’ tool coming soon); and, critically, linking marketing spend to measurable business outcomes to engage the board.

We’ll leave the final word to Tom Roach, VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, who penned the introduction to our report:

“I can’t recommend JICMAIL’s new report, The Value of Super Touchpoint Planning, and its resulting action plan highly enough.”

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.