UK door-to door marketing: opening new doors

It was 1849 when the Post Office first encouraged people to provide a letter box in their front door – a request that signalled the birth of a marketing medium that has grown into a monster over the past 154 years. Today, around 9.5 billion marketing items are delivered through letterboxes each year, with every household receiving more than 300 on average, around a third of which are not addressed to anyone in particular.

DMA (UK) figures reveal that expenditure on door-to-door (D2D) marketing has risen by more than 23 per cent since 1998. New figures out in June are expected to show that spending jumped from #522m in 2000 to around #570m last year.

Consumer goods clients have adopted the medium to push product sampling, improve their brand image, generate awareness and build databases. For retailers, the aim of D2D activity is to drive foot- fall, usually using coupons and catalogues.

Direct marketers have also been won over by the relatively low cost of D2D, as well as its flexibility and reported acceptance levels among consumers. The average cost per thousand, including distribution, print and production, is around #80.

Research by BMRB Omnibus/Synergism on behalf of the DMA's Door to Door Council reveals that between 62 and 71 per cent of consumers find door- drops useful. And that almost half the recipients have visited a store, bought a product or sent off for information.

Almost 80 per cent of consumers read, glance at or pass on door-drops – the same percentage as for direct mail.

There are down sides, of course. Compared with more sophisticated forms of direct marketing, targeting levels are low and tend to be restricted to postcodes. There can also be a lot of wastage and clutter.

Nevertheless, the dramatic growth in the use of D2D by direct marketers cannot be ignored. It has prompted a debate about whether door-drops are really a direct marketing medium after all? If so, are direct response advertisers trying to make the medium work in a way that runs contrary to its character?

The question of whether D2D is a form of direct marketing seems to hinge on the level of targeting possible, how response can be monitored, and the amount of waste generated. In sectors such as financial services, which accounts for 26 per cent of the total volume (source: Royal Mail), many companies are using D2D as traditional direct marketing for customer acquisition. Banks, for example, have no idea who needs a loan at a particular time. For them, D2D activity keeps the brand in the consumer's mind, so that they get a response if a leaflet hits the doormat at just the right time in the just right neighbourhood.

Samantha Kennedy, board director at direct marketing agency Cramm Francis Woolf (CFW), says that to imply D2D is not a direct marketing medium is to suggest it cannot be targeted. CFW is one of many companies to use neighbourhood classification profiling systems such as Mosaic to identify their clients' target audience, whether it be affluent households, students or ethnic minorities.

"Although a product might not appeal to everyone who receives a door- drop – and there may be instances where they will have bought into a brand already – you can definitely target D2D activity. Door-drops are typically around the fifth of the cost of [other forms of] direct marketing, which means they can reach a larger audience more cost- effectively," says Kennedy.

She also disagrees with any assumption that most D2D advertisers are looking to generate a store visit rather than a phone call. Retailers may regard the medium as an essential marketing tool to drive foot- fall, but some of the most prolific advertisers rely on people picking up the phone. For instance, CFW oversaw the 3 million-plus household door-drop campaign for national learning advice line Learndirect, which encouraged the public to make a call. Learndirect group account director Lee Fortune says the medium was chosen to supplement TV ads because the initiative had to target such a broad audience across so many social demographics.

The takeaway food market also relies heavily on door-drops to drive phone business. Jeff Franklin, director of www.dor-2-dor.com (an agency that specialises in supporting local clients in this market), sits on the DMA Council committee, fighting his corner for smaller players in the D2D industry. He says fastfood advertisers usually employ some element of targeting: "Although pizza leaflets might not be addressed to a particular person in a household, the owner of the business will know their local area and tell us to focus on certain streets and ignore others, based on their knowledge of where orders have come from in the past."

Nick Wells, managing director of Circular Distributors, which delivers more than 1.5 billion items a year, says that although door-drop marketing is rightly seen as a simple mass medium it can still be one of the most precisely targeted. His company uses its CD Microtargeting system to pinpoint a client's target market in units of just 700 households.

To effectively compete in the thriving D2D sector, pure direct marketing companies must be flexible as well as creative. This is particularly true of non-retail clients that are attempting to compete on the doormat against the large number of store groups that have flooded the sector in recent years.

Retailers represent around 50 per cent of all D2D volume, with grocery chains alone sending out around 1.5 billion items a year. The technique works for them because it means a national chain can run local promotions to generate traffic to individual stores.

The medium became popular with retailers during the recession of the early Nineties when stores desperately needed to generate extra sales. This was the first time that many chains had analysed so closely the sales performance of individual products they were advertising in door- drop leaflets.

"At busy times like Easter or Christmas, traditional direct marketing clients selling a financial product or hearing aid will struggle to stand out on the doormat alongside a glossy eight-page leaflet from Asda or Tesco that full of special offers," says The Leaflet Company's managing director Mark Young, who chairs the DMA's Door To Door Council.

Door-drop coupon redemption levels can be up to four times higher than in press ads. And the supermarkets are experts at using D2D and coupons as part of an integrated direct marketing strategy. The exchange of coupons can be tracked to individual shoppers, and the data collected used to refine other direct activity.

Yet at grocery chain Somerfield marketing controller Rachel Warren has always viewed D2D as advertising rather than direct marketing. The medium is being used increasingly as a tactical advertising tool, and activity is targeted around individual stores. "Our D2D budget is twice that for TV, and now accounts for around 50 per cent of our total marketing budget," she says.

Some observers believe the direct marketing community still has a lot to learn about how to use D2D most effectively. A number of direct marketing agencies stand accused of falling into the trap of thinking they can simply adapt existing creative work to achieve the impact they want.

Colin Keywood, managing director of specialist D2D research company Front Door, which works on behalf of clients such as Asda, Sainsbury's and John Lewis, says the rules of the D2D game are very different. "Stand-out can be greatly enhanced by using different shaped items or tried-and-tested formats. The envelope or wordy contents do not necessarily translate very well in the door-drop marketing arena. A piece must be designed for its specific purpose to achieve the greatest degree of saliency," he says.

The debate about targeting and creativity will continue, but there are many D2D campaigns that have little or no relevance to traditional direct marketing techniques, and which could be holding the industry back.

Andrew Burgess, managing director of direct media specialist EquiMedia, says retailers that send blanket mail-drops to huge areas as an alternative form of cheap advertising are fuelling consumer complaints about junk mail. He argues that the rise in the number of free newspapers has also had an adverse effect on people's perception of door-drops. It means direct response advertisers need to understand clearly the mechanics of the system to make the medium work for them.

"The cost of using post instead of free newspaper inserts for volume mailings is extremely high, yet postal delivery outperforms in terms of cost per response. This is primarily because 80 per cent of all door- drops are posted on a Monday or Tuesday, avoiding the free newspaper deliveries which take place from Wednesday. This means less clutter in the mailbox," he says. "It is all about understanding when your customers are most likely to receive your mailer."

If a D2D advertiser is able to monitor response, they are arguably using a direct marketing medium. Trinity Mirror Marketing Direct, the specialist D2D division of Trinity Mirror, carried out a random sample of 50 D2D items distributed in one week in Birmingham, including national, regional and local campaigns. It discovered that more than 70 per cent of the items had a direct response mechanism. This might have been a coupon, freephone number, standard phone number or Web address.

Deputy managing director Steve Mulvihill says only 30 per cent of the companies sampled used items geared exclusively to increasing footfall. He accepts that consumers respond favourably to coupons and catalogues, but insists traditional D2D calls to action, such as a buy one get one free or an invitation for a freephone quote, also work well.

Direct marketing offers more sophisticated targeting and is regarded as having better response rates, but in the current economic the cost arguments for using D2D are strong.

"In this more fragmented media environment, many marketers have found that door to door provides a brand with direct access to the consumer, who can interact with the brand in a way they cannot with ads. This can bring far more tangible, effective and measurable results," says Rob Gray, managing director of integrated marketing company Mercier Gray.

Everyone in the direct response industry is looking for an effective return on investment. If the message and creative work delivers, there is no reason why they cannot find it in an effective D2D campaign.

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