MAILING ISSUES: Time to deliver

With the postal services market opening up, mailers could soon be able to select the day of the week in which direct mail and door-drops arrive. David Reed outlines the potentially huge benefits

Despite being heralded as the most accountable medium, direct mail – and door-drops – do not offer any physical evidence of being delivered in the form of written confirmation by the postal service.

One thing you can be sure about with advertising is that an ad has appeared. With TV ads, simply watching during the right slot will provide confirmation, even before the contractor sends out a written report. Radio and press ads can also be physically monitored – and research companies exist that do just that.

Even door-to-door can now be monitored using a service like StepCheck. But once the mailing house has raised a docket saying items were handed over to Royal Mail, mailers just have to wait and see if the enquiries or orders start to come in.

It is a surprising gap. The sheer volume of items makes it impossible to validate that every single item has been distributed. But the absence of proof reflects another gap in direct mail's measurability: guaranteed delivery dates.

In theory, any mailer wanting to guarantee that something will be delivered on a specific day could use a premium service, such as registered or special delivery, or a regular service like first class and rely on the high average quality of service. But in reality mailers will not pay the costs associated with this, and routinely use discounted bulk services.

Yet there is a growing desire to be able to plan direct mail more accurately, especially in the context of integrated campaigns. As competition grows in the postal services sector, guaranteed delivery dates could emerge as a critical point of difference.

"We have products that are fairly closely timed, and others that are less so. It is all about having a choice between being certain about the time or having a lower price," says Richard Roche, head of media markets at Royal Mail.

He adds: "You rarely get campaigns that require delivery to hit a single spot, but advertisers are less likely to use solus commercials anyway."

Commercials usually consist of multiple spots.

Direct mail offers a definitive opportunity to be seen, since the one thing Royal Mail can guarantee is that every item reaches its final destination. What it cannot guarantee, however, is when the item will arrive. Last year saw a collapse in its performance against service targets, although the company claims to have climbed back to 90-plus per cent delivery within the specified timeframe.

Delivery services have been designed to spread when items drop, giving the postal service more flexibility in its capacity, while offering lower prices. Mailsort 3 has a guaranteed delivery window of between seven and ten days, for example. This works well for offers that are not time-sensitive, or as part of an integrated campaign.

If timing is more critical, there has, until now, been little choice. So it is perhaps no surprise that TNT Mail UK has chosen timing as a major differentiator of its proposition, alongside price. Its Premier service is looking to take market share in the bills, statements and direct mail sector by offering a 48-hour delivery window.

The company claims this offers mail users faster, more reliable and cost-effective bulk mail delivery. Crucially, it is making a virtue out of a necessity. Under the downstream access contracts agreed with Royal Mail, TNT Mail (along with UK Mail) has to ensure that its items reach delivery offices within tightly defined timeframes.

UK Mail is also offering a two-day service, but with the addition of tracking items. The other main rival, Deutsche Post, is focusing on price, with added flexibility around collection times. In the context of the newly competitive market, it is becoming clear that the closer scheduling of direct mail delivery dates could make a difference.

"There are clients that have specific messages to deliver on specific days or in a narrow window. We have some clients who have experienced very pronounced reductions in response rates if their mailing does not drop before the weekend, for example," says Mike Hughes, chief executive of Mail Marketing International.

For retailers and mail order companies, delivery on a Friday or Saturday leads to a significant uplift in response – as much as 50 per cent compared with delivery at the start of the week. This creates an evident problem if cost per item considerations, rather than overall return on investment, mean only Mailsort 3 can be used. Mailings using this method could arrive on the day before the weekend, or just after.

"It is extremely valuable to have a named day for delivery, or preferably a two- or three-day guaranteed window without the cost of first class," says Hughes.

He notes that alternative service providers have identified this demand as a business opportunity. It is allowing mailings to be injected downstream on a Wednesday at second-class prices (or better), with the confidence that they will arrive on Friday.

"It is a balance. People want to pay what is reasonable. Only then are they concerned about the question of delivery on a specific day or window," he says.

Hughes also notes that timing becomes critical within multistage mailings. A campaign using a teaser, mailer and follow-up has to maintain gaps between each component. Loose delivery dates can lead to the bunching up of the individual stages, diluting their overall impact. Clients also need to plan their resources, especially response handling. Direct mail has a relatively predictable pattern of response generation, with a spike immediately after items arrive, followed by a declining tail. Knowing what the first delivery date will be shortens the window during which call centre resources need to be in place.

Until these new services became available, advertisers were also restricted in the calls to action they could use. There is a lot of evidence to show that using advertising to support direct activity, such as direct mail or door-to-door, creates uplift. Yet it has not been possible to make references to specific days of the week on which targets might see these written messages.

"If you are using other media to support a door-drop, for example, with a charity, you may want to use one piece of creative work to explain the issues, then another piece that says: 'Now we are sending you a piece asking for your support.' That would be very powerful," says Karen Thomas, director at WWAV Media.

She says this kind of integration is very beneficial, but it has not been possible to use clear statements such as 'you'll receive more information tomorrow'. "If you were able to say it will hit on a Wednesday, you could build TV ratings to reach a peak before that day, rather than just building across a week."

Postal services would be able to balance their capacity because different industry sectors have different days they would prefer to use. With financial services, for example, Mondays to Wednesdays pull in a better response than other days, while retailers want Fridays.

Thomas comments: "There would be a market for it. But there will always be a market for advertisers which are not bothered when things hit, for example, film-processing companies. I would certainly be interested in testing it as part of an integrated campaign."

If advertisers can begin to look into the possibilities of timed delivery, it will not be long before the other gap in direct mail's proposition is filled. Management information about mailing campaigns has been patchy, but could soon increase as the technology in end delivery services and mailing houses starts to be linked.

"Track and trace is something a lot of people talk about," says Malcolm Bruce, director, national posts, at Pitney Bowes. "It is a technical answer to a question that has not been asked yet: what will you do with that information? But to say you don't need it because 99 per cent of items will be delivered tomorrow misses the point."

His company has already launched a system in the US which captures data from outward mail preparation and USPS and reports on delivery progress online. Mail users can map distribution and identify sticking points, adjusting their resources and support activity accordingly. It is being introduced progressively across Europe.

Direct mail may not be the only sector that is keen to have faster reporting and better delivery guarantees. "We have one major banking client that is sending out credit cards. Within four days of the card, it sends out the PIN. That is when the card is open to fraud if it has been sent to the wrong address," Bruce says.

Knowing promptly that a card has gone astray, been diverted or delivered to the wrong address would allow banks to stop the PIN mailing, reducing fraud at a stroke. "Track and trace as a feature is only a benefit if you can get to a very high predictability that mail has been properly delivered," he adds.

Roche comments: "Management information is a market we want to be in. As we get more automation in place, we can put that information back into the planning cycle, because it is very powerful."

Providing additional tools like this may become inevitable in the fight to retain share of expenditure. Mail users increasingly want to know that the medium is as precise, in all aspects, as has previously been claimed, only now they want to see the evidence.

As Yolanda Noble, chief executive of Corporate Mailing Group, says: "Until now, drop timing has been far more a matter for regulatory compliance – such as the receipt of extraordinary general meetings notices to shareholders – or tracking fulfilment of a campaign response."

But with an increasing number of advertisers combining multiple media and using multistage campaigns, timing is everything. Noble says: "The efficiency gain is being able to time calls so that they are not made before receipt, and soon enough after receipt for the item still to be fresh in mind."

So with competition in the postal services market hotting up, guaranteed delivery dates look set to play a major part in the battle for customers, as they could prove vital in lifting response rates.

As well as winning business, it could also prove a good way to improve the reputation of the industry as recipients start to receive mailings and door-drops at more appropriate times of the week.

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