Does your door drop item work hard enough on the doormat?

I’m far from being a creative or copy guru; I’ll leave that to the experts like Drayton (Bird) and Andy (Owen).

But I have shared speaking platforms with them both over the years and I’ve picked up a few tips which are as relevant today as they were when I first heard them.

And they are relevant because its still common to see clients delivering door drop material which can perhaps be found wanting in creating that “cut through on the doormat” element everyone is seeking.

Dependent upon who you listen to, your door drop piece has 6, 8 or perhaps 10 seconds from the doormat to a “resting place”.

For some, that may be their recycling facility or waste bin, but as recent Royal Mail research has demonstrated, for a large percentage of others, there may be a family appointed depository for subsequent review.

And the research also confirms just how long some households keep door drop material – longer than direct mail.

But to achieve that review status, your door drop item needs to have captured the imagination, sparked an interest or even revived a need to solve a problem or issue.

Some clients use solus distribution to help achieve stand out, but in reality that only has limited credence.

Residents returning to a household empty during working hours may only find your solus item sitting alongside other items delivered that day by Royal Mail door to door, free newspapers and/or other solus distributions.

To paraphrase a well known saying – “50% of my door drop spend may be compromised but I don’t know which 50%”.

Many years ago I sat in on a research de-brief with a ferry operator client, a regular user of door drops which worked well for them and they were keen to further improve response.

Research, perhaps unsurprisingly, clearly demonstrated that destination and price were the two outstanding motivating factors for consumers purchasing tickets.

Changing a sometimes cluttered front page to a picture of a windmill and tulips (in Holland) and a £59.00 price tag, saw website visits and subsequent bookings soar on the next drop.

A similar scenario with a London Borough Council, measuring delivery efficiency versus recall, found that the front page image similarly influenced recall levels.

Over a number of months, recall remained relatively constant (also proving consistent levels of distribution quality), but the issue which had a picture of the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Borough nearly took recall off the scale.

So the overriding message has to be think carefully about your creative and copy content – front and back; whilst door drop can deliver many things, a guarantee of which way up your distribution item will land is not one of them.

Don’t hide any incentive to purchase or trial on an inside page without displaying any mention of its existence on the outside pages, a consumer might not even bother to open your leaflet otherwise.

I’m not going to get involved in font sizes, typefaces or colours, talk to Drayton and Andy, but they are vitally important.

And, do you know what the most emotive words are to use in your copy which will help sell your product or service?

These guys do.

As Andy says at seminars, some leaflets (and direct mail pieces) look like the client was given a home printing kit for Christmas and are frankly dreadful and then the client wonders why their spend did not produce the anticipated ROI, so blames the medium/s.

And of course, don’t forget to test, but let’s leave talking about that for another day.