Summarising the key learnings from Whistl’s door drop lockdown learnings series

Whistl recently hosted a series of webinar-based sessions aimed at consolidating the learnings from the past year. We have summarised the insight from this series along with our view on how to get the most from your door drop activity.

Door drop: busting the myths

1. “Door drops just get thrown away”

• 92% of people read them
• On average, door drops stay in the home for 6.9 days
• Door drops get revisited 3.19 times on average

2. “It takes a long time to arrange”

• Door drop campaigns require only 18 days to be arranged from start to finish. This includes briefing, booking, printing etc.

3. “Concerned about not being able to access the sectors required”

• The Royal Mail delivers a maximum of 7 non-competing items to one household
• Households only receive approximately 3 door drops per week
• The only reason a desired postcode will be unavailable is due to another competing item going out at the same time

4. “Unable to target outside of the UK”

• European bookings can be arranged from the UK with the same briefing method as UK-based activity

Insights and planning

Here are six key areas to focus on when planning and optimising door drop activity:

1. Campaign objectives: Establishing an overall objective and identifying what success looks like are the first steps in ensuring a successful door drop campaign.
2. Ascertain an audience: Knowing who you are targeting and how you plan on engaging with them is worth investing time into at this stage as pertains to the initial testing of the channel.
3. Strategic planning: Maximise your learnings where possible from activity, creative, offers and frequency.
4. Campaign evaluation: Focus on segment, creative and geographic performance alongside overall performance KPIs.
5. Apply these learnings: Finally, ensure that previous campaign learnings are applied to continually hone channel performance from campaign to campaign.

Creative solutions

People think quicker than they speak. Most door drops have just a 5 second window to capture the audience’s attention.

1. New clients can initially start small, minimise upfront costs with an A5 or A4 postcard creative.
2. Calls to action and repeated key information are essential for recall and the performance of the campaign.
3. Innovation also plays an important role in recall and extending dwell times. Try moving away from standard creative shapes in order to illustrate the size or look of your product.
4. Create a ‘shelf life’ for your product. Introducing deadlines and offering discount codes are a smart way to increase immediate responses.
5. Tie your campaign in with other media. Consistent messaging and appearance can increase initial recognition, in turn enhancing engagement from door drop activity.

Integration

1. Media integration, when used correctly, can boost a campaign’s effectiveness and enrich the user’s experience.
2. The creative links established throughout the crossovers of media are important for creating an immediate trigger in the consumer’s mind.
3. Focus on a simple main message which will become relatable to the brand and product(s).

Jicmail studies have reported a 21% improvement in campaign performance when integrated with TV and radio.

Measurement

Accurate measurement is key to both validating channel performance and driving improvements in efficiency.

Methods of measurement can vary depending on the goal of the activity, however including an offer code where possible can be key to isolating directly attributable (last click) conversion. From this point responses can be mapped back to geographical regions or times and cross referenced against look-alike regions. At ARM we have the capability to track website visits to postcode sector enabling for precise attribution of door to door attribution and validation of regional channel uplift.

ARM Recommendation is to ideally combine our sector level web visit and last click conversion data with econometric analysis to provide a holistic view of door drop performance alongside any additional media activity.

All Response Media viewpoint

Door drop advertising can be a valuable addition to any acquisition-focused campaign. However, it is vital to ensure that time is invested in the planning stages to maximise the benefits and deliver an integrated approach across media channels, utilising all available data to enrich the process.

The ability to regionally target and upweight sectors is a useful tool to both drive up regional awareness and develop actionable insights that can be applied at a larger scale across national campaigns.

For more information on the door drop services we offer, click here.