36_ PRINT POWER

Transcription

1 36_ PRINT POWER

2 / DOOR DROP Some say it s not the sexiest marketing medium, but door drop is one of the most effective channels available to a brand. With improved targeting and tracking data, it s time to fall in love again with one of the most reliable formats in the industry By Johnny Sharp PRINT POWER _37

3 DOOR DROP \ AS A MARKETING CHANNEL, door drop is one of the least sexy. That s the admission of Mark Davies, Managing Director of Whistl s Doordrop Media Division and President of The European Letterbox Marketing Association (ELMA). But, he adds, But that means that when people invest in it, it s driven by just one thing. No one s using us out of love, nostalgia or vanity. It s just about the results and the performance. Not so long ago, the idea of posting leaflets through every door to promote your products seemed like a very 20th Century method of marketing inefficient, unfocused and unfashionable. As soon as customers could be reached via their inbox rather than their letterbox for a fraction of the cost, it seemed like a no-brainer for marketers to switch their attentions to online channels. But predictions of door drop s demise have proved unfounded. People still feel value in the immediacy of something they pick up that you don t have to search for, says Istvan Denes, CEO of Helsinki-based direct mail agency SSM. It s not disturbing you at the wrong moment and there s a lot of value in this media. It works and it functions well. It s pretty resilient, Davies agrees. Across Europe we ve seen a 2.4% volume decline but a growth in media spend of 1.3%. So it s very a stable medium and has been for several years. Improved targeting If those figures suggest that marketers are slowly putting money back into door drop but focusing on quality rather than quantity, it confirms a trend many in the industry have pointed to, a trend where mailouts are more closely targeted and so less volume is required. And the key to the resurgence of door drop is ever-improving tracking information that the industry has gleaned digitally. We re constantly fine-tuning our ability to support clients with research, says Denes, trying to match buyers with a map of distribution and research on how people remember products. For instance, in Finland we break our own network into small pieces that we call runner areas, which are made up of maybe 350 households. For each geographical areas we can work out other values based on other databases and then provide targets such as type of household and level of socioeconomic status. We ve really honed our game in recent years to help track the online to offline story, Davies adds. The result is that online brands are increasingly using this offline channel to win customers. In 2016, we began to see some really significant investment into door drop from purely digital brands such as Ocado and Amazon, says Davies, and they are beginning to use door drop as an acquisition channel. We see significant growth in the future from that. One thing that door drop and direct mail can also do is put the product in the hand of the consumer. Product samples are always an option, says Denes. Sometimes we deliver products such as dog biscuits or perfume for consumers to try, and it s always interesting. Rethinking door drop Denes points out that one of door drop s strengths is its reach and admits that the bulk of the business is people who are interested in reaching out to everybody. But increasingly, door drop is being used more selectively, with a less-is-more approach becoming more viable thanks to improved market information and new technology. One man who is helping advance that process is Roel Schoemaker. He s a senior No one s using us out of love, nostalgia or vanity. It s just about the results and the performance Mark Davies, Managing Director of Whistl s Doordrop Media Division and President of ELMA If you respect the consumer and have a better idea of what each of them wants through their letterbox, they will be open to it Roel Schoemaker, senior consultant with Motivaction International 38_ PRINT POWER

4 KRISTIANSAND HIRTSHALS 3 timer og 15 minutter LARVIK HIRTSHALS 3 timer og 45 minutter Prezzi validi dal 7 al 18 Settembre Tonno in olio di oliva pinne gialle 160 g ( 6,19 al kg) 1, Detersivo liquido lavatrice concentrato 2 l ( 1,20 al l) 2, Mozzarella italiana 2x125 g g ( 4,20 al kg) lavaggi 1, % -28% Riso Basmati 2 kg ( 1,15 al kg) 2, g -20% -23% LI TROVI SOLO DA in s g 1 18_2016.indd 1 11/08/16 15:59 Ta SuperSpeed til LEGOLAND Billund Resort full fart og fullpakket moro! Kings of the letterbox A selection of door drop leaflets, ranging from targeted messaging from German pet brand Shecker and Norwegian travel brand Color Line, to mini-catalogues from Italy s In s Mercato supermarket and leaflet inserts from Amazon People still feel value in the immediacy of something they pick up that you don t have to search for Istvan Denes, CEO of Finnish direct mail agency SSM PRINT POWER _39

5 DOOR DROP \ consultant with Amsterdam market researchers and consultants Motivaction International, who have worked with brands such as Grolsch, Danone and Ben & Jerry s. For him, quality is always more important than quantity. There s a lot of potential for door drop, even among people who right now do not want to receive it. But the days when you just dropped a lot of media in letterboxes and hoped they would be read are over. Mostly when people don t want to receive door drop it s because there s an enormous amount of information on the leaflet, he continues, and they don t want to go through all that data. They want to have a more tailored leaflet in their hand. In the age of the internet you can find out much more information about your customer, and so segmentation becomes very important. We also have the technology to know what designs customers will find attractive. With modern techniques such as eye-tracking and facial coding we have found out some simple rules about where to put what kind of information in an advertisement. So if you respect the consumer and have a better idea of what each of them wants through their letterbox, they will be open to it. Other research backs up his claim that the door drop channel is well regarded by customers compared to other forms of advertising. In 2016, a five-year study conducted by consumer insight specialists Toluna found that 60% of consumers in Europe prefer to receive retail offers via door drop media more than any other channel, including newspaper adverts and online offers. New approaches Elsewhere, we have already seen radical developments in the door drop industry. The Danish national mail service PostNord Dansk introduced a reversed targeting system in 2012, where consumers would be given the option to go online to opt in or out of commercial mailouts, or only receive those from sectors of the market that interest them. On the one hand it limits the reach of door drop, but on the other it means marketers have part of their job done for them they are automatically only targeting potential customers rather than bombarding uninterested parties with messages destined for the recycling bin. Meanwhile, another channel within a channel has opened up in the past decade, which consumers are increasingly getting used to across Europe leaflet inserts. Online retail giant Amazon has been offering commercial partners the chance to have their leaflets or voucher offers inserted into their postal packages for over a decade, but in the past five years the practice has grown and specialist companies such as Germany-based companies DiMaBay and PaketPLUS continue to grow. This form of marketing has been around for around for 10 years, but it s really grown in the last five, says DiMaBay s Managing Director Martin Ehrentreich. The beauty of leaflet inserts is that they benefit both host and guest brands. It s win-win. For advertisers it s a good opportunity to get new customers with attractive CPAs, and for the companies who put the leaflets in their packages it s a good way to create more turnover. Ehrentreich sees huge potential for growth in this side of the industry. If you consider AVIS, they have nearly one million shipments, he says. You could put up to three inserts per parcel and they could put three million inserts a month, 36 million inserts a year. And 320 per thousand adds up to a million! That s a huge source of revenue for them and a huge opportunity for advertisers to reach a highly desirable customer base. The beauty of leaflet inserts is that they benefit both host and guest brands. It s win-win Martin Ehrentreich, Managing Director of DiMaBay 40_ PRINT POWER