Sonia Hitzelberger, Sales Director at Whistl Doordrop, shares how brands can utilise doordrop to effectively reach consumers during Black Friday.

Door drops are not just affordable – they’re versatile, highly targeted and very effective when sent in this period.

Supporting this view, we can see from JICMail that 22% of people who receive a doordrop go online for more information or make a purchase.  JICMAIL (Joint Industry Committee for Mail) marks a first for mail. Set up by the DMA, IPA, ISBA, Whistl and Royal Mail, JICMAIL provides mail with the same metrics available to other channels (think BARB for TV).  The data is captured by global market research agency Kantar TNS, using a diary that follows each piece of mail over a four-week period, across a sample size of 1,000 UK households.

Doordrop Media was once regarded as a poor relation in the marketing mix. Now, sophisticated targeting, better creatives and better measurement have all helped improve the impact of door drops. As we know where the doordrops landed, we can correlate this exposure with who went on to buy ensuring accurate attribution of doordrop performance.

Consumer power is increasing with access to more shopping platforms and buying choice than ever before. With multiple ways to find a solution to a purchasing need, retailers and online stores must maintain strong brand identity and position of trust, to finalise that all-important sale. Most importantly doordrops are great at providing that moment of inspiration, introducing a customer to a product or offer that they didn’t know they wanted so could never have Googled it!

Doordrop Media is supporting retailers and online retailers with audience insights to understand their target audience and increase their customer bases, leading to many companies that exist entirely in the digital space investing in door drops as a marketing method (for example by overlaying broadband speed onto online retail doordrop selections has improved the campaigns effectiveness).

At Whistl, we can help you define your audience, build your relevant store or online catchments and drive traffic to your website or footfall to your bricks-and-mortar store, with a highly targeted doordrop.

Doordrops can be delivered locally within a few streets in your town or they can cover every household in the country should this be the requirement. They play a key role in:

• Increasing customer databases – find new customers in a GDPR compliant way
• Promoting new businesses/branding
• Reaching a large audience cost-effectively
• Supporting other advertising activity as part of an integrated campaign
• Driving new/customers into new/shops

Gtech use Whistl’s intelligent doordrop approach

Another example of how Doordrop Media used to drive Black Friday sales can be seen is with Gtech.

Gtech design and manufacture cordless appliances for the home and garden. Their founder and CEO developed the world’s first cordless sweeper and have since gone from strength to strength. Their mission is to make life easier by producing the best possible products for the home.

Campaign objective

To create a GDPR compliant and highly targeted doordrop campaign to increase the penetration of direct customers. Doordrop was tested as a standalone acquisition channel and to support Black Friday.

Solution

Two 6 page roll folds were created offering a free gift worth £50 or savings of up to £150 and free delivery. Whistl created a targeting model using Gtech anonymised postcode data and located the best postcode sectors. National and Regional Mosaic profiles were created to enhance the targeting approach. Headroom opportunity was key in the success of these campaigns.

Campaign results

Within 2 weeks of the doordrop landing, nearly 1,000 NEW customers were generated achieving an ROI of nearly 3:1.

With this ability to create specific audience segments, your retail message will connect with your customer base more effectively or engage with look-a-like new customers where your message will be most relevant.

To find out more about Whistl, get in touch with Sonia at sonia.hitzelberger@whistl.co.uk

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Whistl Doordrop Media, the market leader in audience targeting and leaflet services, has launched its GDPR compliant Partially Addressed Mail (PAM) solution for advertisers following a successful trial.

The industry wide PAM solution was developed to enable advertisers to continue to prospect consumers directly without compromising the GDPR legislation that came into effect in 2018. Instead of using personal details, that may not have received recipient approval, advertisers can use titles such as Householder or Pizza Lover, Holiday Jetsetter in the addressee space.

By targeting households using geo-demographics at postcode level (c.15 households) advertisers can create campaigns that have lower postage costs, significantly reduced data costs and a 30% greater reach than a traditional fully addressed advertising item.

Mark Davies, Managing Director, said: “As Whistl DDM is the market leader in audience targeting through the letterbox, we can work with brands and charities to create highly targeted mailings that result in excellent conversation rates. Thanks to JICMail, the audience measurement project for the mail industry developed by Whistl and Royal Mail, we know that PAM stays in the home for 7 days, of which 88% are read.  Combined with traditional door drop or direct mail, PAM can be an effective tool in a fully integrated letterbox-based advertising campaign.  Our charity client Blind Veterans used PAM and recruited the same amount of donors it would expect to recruit during a traditional direct mail campaign but at a lower cost per acquisition.”

Advertisers and media planners who want to find out more about the Partially Addressed Mail from Whistl can click here.

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Mark Davies, Managing Director of Whistl, shares how doordrop coupon marketing can be used to engage directly with customers  and drive behaviour change

A lot has been written lately on the woes of digital media as it reels from one scandal to another. While certainly the scary levels of ad fraud and the lack of transparency covering both data usage, privacy concerns and performance are now widely accepted online, marketing spend does still continue to grow. Even the eye-watering cuts in digital budgets by companies like P&G with little or no impact on sales has failed to stop spend gravitating towards the tech giants. While the P&Gs and Unilevers of this world have been leading laudable campaigns to try to clean up the murky world of digital media a recent global study by Alix Partners concluded that “Despite aggressive media transparency drives from some of the biggest players in the space, some 60% of FMCG brands’ digital marketing spend is wasted – resulting in annual losses of close to $50bn for the industry.”

These performance issues and the current (GDPR) and future (ePrivacy) regulatory change are slowly beginning to force a reappraisal of the marketing mix with traditional channels experiencing something of a renaissance. As Peter Field, one of the most respected commentators on marketing effectiveness has said “We are being over-hyped and over-sold on a uniquely digital future. We need to get real and take a more evidence-based view of what really drives effectiveness.” As a practitioner of direct marketing I particularly like the ‘get real’ in that statement. Real marketing driving real results is what we have focused on in doordrops and since GDPR the number of returning brands who have been surprised and delighted by the performance of a channel they haven’t considered in a decade has grown and grown.

Spend on doordrop media has grown by 4.5% (source: DMA/AA/WARC) since 2015 – the only print channel to have evidenced an increase in marketing investment. As a GDPR compliant channel by design – all the data we use for targeting is anonymised – we are well placed to drive new customer acquisition in this new world. And for FMCG brands they are starting to wake up to the role this sometimes forgotten channel can play in the modern shopper marketing journey. Whether it takes the form of targeted couponing or in-home sampling of your product (what better way to get real!) the power of this channel to engage directly with consumers and drive behaviour change, store traffic and sales is shining through. An in-home sampling campaign for Yushoi when it launched in Tesco and Morrisons drove a 20% uplift in sales in the targeted stores and won that brand and its agency a Gold Award for Shopper Marketing at the IPM Awards.

Meanwhile doordrops have not stood still waiting and hoping for the pendulum to swing back. Firstly the insight available to help plan our channel is better than ever. The launch of JICMail in 2018 provides marketers and agencies the same level of gold standard insight that BARB supplies for TV and Route supplies for Out of Home. Secondly targeting has come on in leaps and bounds with the provision of more and more anonymised data sets to help refine our audience selection and the geographical catchments that our brands require. Earlier this year a brand new set of grocery store catchments was launched meaning we can now define with a new level of science the specific geography for 26,219 shops country-wide. Attribution has been another key battleground. Teaching the marketing world that offline can drive online and that people don’t wake up and type brands they’ve never heard of into search engines has moved people away from the lazy reliance on last click attribution that has filled the coffers of the digital giants. A laser focus on the return on investment has provided bountiful evidence that targeted couponing through its significant media reach can deliver penetration gains over the long term. For example Dunnhumby has demonstrated to one of our clients that those who redeem a coupon are 12 times more likely to repeat purchase.

All of this has driven our growth but there are still too many agencies and brands who whether through inertia or ignorance are not even considering the role that doordrops could play in meeting their marketing objectives. We have had to recognise that the skills and craft in this channel have rusted through the digital obsession. So our latest innovation in marketing automation seeks to address this. We have launched www.leafletdrop.co.uk – an online platform which enables the user to plan and buy a doordrop campaign in minutes with no specialist knowledge required. Simply type in the postcode of the store you are looking to support, build out the catchment based on drivetime or radius, overlay your target market and choose your schedule based on the budget you have available as per the example for the 12,000 households around my local Asda store below.

Then you can choose to book distribution only or buy print through the platform after uploading your print-ready creative, schedule the week of distribution, check out and pay. And if you have more complex requirements or would like to support multiple stores then you can contact us directly and we can provide the targeting to upload into the system rather than selecting the geography yourself. Targeted couponing made easy in short.

To find out more please contact Mark Davies on mark.davies@whistl.co.uk or simply visit www.leafletdrop.co.uk to try it for yourself.

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LSI Netherlands BV – owner of the Peperami brand – and agencies TLC Marketing and Sense were crowned the big winners at The IPM Awards 2017, taking home the trophies for Brand Owner of the Year, Agency of the Year and the coveted Grand Prix Award respectively.

This year’s winners, which were announced at the IPM’s black-tie Awards Gala on Wednesday June 7 at the London Hilton Park Lane, showcased and celebrated the very best in creativity and effectiveness in the promotional marketing industry.

The evening commenced with opening addresses from Lord Black of Brentwood, President of the IPM, and John Sylvester, the IPM’s chairman and Chairman of Sodexo Benefits & Reward Services UK, while the host for the event was Strictly Come Dancing star, Claudia Winkleman.

LSI was named as Brand Owner of the Year, after collecting two Gold and two Silver trophies for its campaign linking Peperami mascot, the Animal, with the Angry Birds movie.

TLC took the Agency of the Year accolade, having picked up four Gold awards and a Silver for a range of different campaigns.

The Grand Prix went to ‘real world’ agency Sense for its #H2O activation, part of the ‘Discomfort Future’ campaign on behalf of The Economist. This saw potential subscribers offered free coffee apparently made from recycled water from a portable toilet, to highlight the issue of water scarcity around the world. It won two Golds and was selected by the IPM awards judges as the best of the best.

The picture above shows Sense collecting their award from Lord Black (left) and the evening’s host, Claudia Winkleman (right).

Other agencies celebrating multiple trophies at the IPM Awards 2017 included The Circle Agency, ZEAL Creative, Toucan and Brand & Deliver. Behaviour change experts 23red managed to pick up Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Not for Profit, Charities and Public Sector category, the second time the agency has achieved this impressive feat.

John Sylvester, Chairman of the IPM, said: “The IPM Awards celebrate outstanding promotional marketing from the very best UK agencies and underscore our commitment to supporting best practice, creativity, effectiveness and innovation. Our Awards are open to everyone in the marketing industry and this year it was great to see both some familiar faces and some newcomers amongst the winners and the audience.”

This year, winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze IPM Awards all qualify for entry into the IMC European Awards, and the IPM will be contacting agencies shortly to explain how to take advantage of this. John Sylvester observes: “The UK produces world-class promotional marketing campaigns, and we want as many of our winners as possible to enter the IMCs so we can underline our leadership in this vitally important sector of the marketing and advertising industry.”

Sponsors for the IPM Awards 2017 included headline sponsor Sodexo, Westfield Shoppingtowns, Sykes, Emirat, Whistl, Granby Marketing Services, Promotional Handling, i-movo, POD Staffing, Peazie and Pictures Experience.

A full list of this year’s winner can be found on the IPM website.

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Shopper Marketing decisions don’t just happen in store – brands need to reach the consumer at every moment of the purchase journey, including in their own homes, says Mark Davies of Whistl PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

There’s a famous statistic, which has been around at least since the 1990s, which suggests that two-thirds or more of shopping decisions are made in store.

The truth is much more complex and the figure (which can vary from 60% up to 82% depending on who you ask and whether they have an interest in promoting the use of in-store media) should not be regarded as an Absolute Moment of Truth. After all, if it were true, 70% or more of all consumer marketing spend would be committed to in-store media, wouldn’t it?

While it may be true that during an average shopping trip, consumers will make a number of decisions at the point of purchase, that does not mean that they delay making two-thirds of their decisions until they are standing in the supermarket aisles. In fact, the decision journey is much more complicated, and much of it happens in the environment where the consumer feels most comfortable – at home (an insight which IKEA has capitalised on).

What’s more, there is compelling evidence to suggest that reaching consumers in their own home, particularly if you can deliver samples of products, is massively powerful in generating sales and brand loyalty.

Direct to Consumer Promotions

There is growing evidence that brands are waking up to the opportunity of direct-to-consumer promotions. A more objective, data-led view of consumer shopping behaviour in the online age highlights those real-world marketing moments that count on the path to purchase.

To put it another way, reaching the consumer in their kitchen to promote a new washing powder or sitting on their sofa to try a new snack is now part of the shopper marketing journey.

Whether consumers are writing a shopping list or selecting items for their online baskets, they are a world away from the theatre of the store and immune to its seductions. Yet there are some really engaging ways in which brands can speak to consumers in the home environment.

Content vs Context

In a marketing age where we are repeatedly told that content is king, where does that leave sampling, where the content is, literally, the contents? Instead of online content farms, in the case of cereal brands like Kellogg’s there are real farms growing wheat and corn; or, for Twining’s, plantations growing its tea.

I would argue that the context of sampling needs more thought than it currently gets. If I am arriving at Victoria station about to fight my way onto the tube on my way to a meeting, then the beautifully constructed sample pack thrust into my hand by a beautifully constructed brand ambassador containing seven tea bags from a well-known household brand is simply one more thing I don’t want to carry.

But if that same ‘content’ is delivered through my letterbox, into my home, where the context is perfect – take it into the kitchen, pour hot water on it, relax and enjoy – then content and context are in a perfect marriage which creates a perfect marketing campaign.

As Jonathan Perelman (formerly head of BuzzFeed’s video ventures and now ‎Head of Digital Ventures at ICM Partners) said: “Content is king but distribution is queen and she wears the trousers!” He wasn’t thinking about in-home sampling, of course, but I think it applies just as well.

Five compelling reasons for sampling in home

The marketing press has recently been highlighting Nestle’s direct to consumer e-commerce drive and Unilever’s acquisition of the Dollar Shave Club as evidence of a growing trend towards brands engaging more with the consumer directly. Certainly, there are good reasons for companies to go down this route.

These include:

Reach. In a recent campaign, one major cereal brand used a combination of in-store sampling and targeted in-home sampling as part of a major new product launch. The in-store sampling covered 339 stores and delivered 63,338 samples. The in-home sampling was targeted to over two million households in specific retail catchments where shopping propensity data could predict which of 1,300 supermarkets would benefit from the campaign.

Cost. A campaign last year for a new snack brand hand-delivered their product to over half a million homes to support its launch in Tesco and Morrisons at roughly a fifth of the cost per sample that in-store sampling could offer.

Performance. In the case of the cereal brand mentioned above, in-home sampling generated real customer loyalty, as the product was used in the home and as such became part of the family routine. Over a six-month post-campaign evaluation period, households who had been exposed to the in-home sampling were seen to have added this brand to their brand preferences and continued to purchase, driving long-term return on investment. The stores that were supported with in-store sampling saw an initial uplift in sales but quickly returned to prior levels. The snack brand saw uplifts of up to 74% in sales in certain TV regions through in-home sampling which massively out-performed other media.

Measurability. Knowing which households have been targeted by the activity and which stores will be impacted by the activity gives brands enormous insight into the value the campaign has generated. Whether tracking through quantitative sales data either at an individual basket level or at a specific store uplift level, through social media buzz monitoring or via in depth post-campaign consumer research, direct-to-consumer promotions are inherently measurable. They can provide brands with valuable insights into the consumers who are buying their products and also deliver feedback on their products themselves. For example, our analysis has demonstrated that redeemers of coupons are 12 times more likely to make a repeat purchase while 65% of consumers would not have gone on to purchase a product without receiving the sample first.

Brand equity. When a brand puts itself on promotion at half price in their local store, shoppers think that the retailer is bringing them an incredible offer. The link and the equity is with the retailer rather than the brand. When the same promotion is delivered directly to the consumer in the name of the brand via targeted couponing, then that brand is receiving all of the equity.

Shopper marketing is Coming Home

For the vast majority of FMCG brands, the home is where their products will live and be used. Smart brands are beginning to realise the opportunity to engage directly with their target consumers and are reaping the rewards. Shopper Marketing really is coming home.

Mark Davies is Managing Director of Whistl Doordrop Media. Whistl is a sponsor of The IPM Awards 2017.

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