Door drop digest: Carat UK's Jim Fox

For me door drops are all about the targeting. Working for a media agency and not a creative agency, our time is spent refining the targeting to ensure our client’s message gets into the right homes. Our job is to profile, build propensity models, rank postcode sectors, decide drive times and map catchment areas. Once safely delivered, the amazing creative, exciting copy and fantastic offer can do the rest. If the targeting is wrong the creative stands no chance.

Who lives in a road like this?
As we know, door drops are targeted at postcode sector level, so this got me thinking, am I really like my neighbours and the people in my road? This made me realise I don’t really know my road. I know my direct neighbours, primarily from sorting out fence issues and party wall agreements, but they are families with older children.

I know Peggy and Jim, a lovely, retired Irish couple just across the road and I know that Ken Livingstone and his newts live five doors down, but I wouldn’t say that we are alike. I don’t know how many of the houses in the road are lived in by families or how many have been converted into flats and who lives in them.

Generally, it is a nice road with ongoing signs of improvement such as Farrow and Ball shades on front doors and wooden shutters – which is my basic barometer of an okay area. But the sad truth is, like many places, there doesn’t seem to be much of a community, or if there is I am not part of it.

Defining the postcode sector – scientifically
To help me further, I turned to Acorn to help define the area in which I live. My postcode sector contains 2,567 households and indexes highly against urban professional types, both young and old living in a mix of houses and flats, both home owners and renters, so possibly quite a typical London demographic, and on paper it looks like there is some disposable income to spend, so a decent target audience.

We live in catchment areas for numerous supermarkets and DIY stores, we are home and car owners, so ripe to an insurance offer and we all could probably do with a switching our telecoms and utility suppliers for a better deal. I was looking forward to reviewing what I would receive this week and critiquing its targeting, relevance and creative impact. I even made a promise to myself to respond to what arrived. My car insurance was due so perfect timing to pick up the phone and get some quotes. I relished the thought of going in store to redeem an offer – ideally wine, rather than DIY related!

Ready and waiting for door drops…
Every day I would return home excited to what may have arrived, and daily I was disappointed. Nothing arrived all week! Of all weeks, this can’t be happening. I spoke to Royal Mail to understand if this was a particularly quiet week for door drops, but no. Obviously my little part of North West London is not attractive to the usual suspects this week and even the pizza and chicken shops didn’t want to know us.

Then, Saturday morning, something arrived on my doormat. This wasn’t a flash bit of creative, it hadn’t been delivered by the postman nor had there been time spent profiling and analysing data to determine where to deliver it and its expected ROI. This was a newsletter from the local Residents Association. It was detailing local events and initiatives, such as fireworks night, tree-planting, carol singing, quiz nights and when the next meeting was and how to get involved.

The power of a good, well targeted door drop
This really made me think, my day job involves planning large door drop campaigns for advertisers and it allows us to be very targeted on a local level and commercially deliver a positive ROI for their large marketing budgets. However, something so simple, relevant and well targeted (purely geographical) as a local newsletter can be an essential element of building and retaining some sort of community in such a diverse city – the community “ROI” on that must be huge.

At the beginning of the week I was resigned to just being someone who lives on our road and never knowing many other people locally. Thanks to this newsletter I am going to go to the next quiz night and get more involved in my local area. I do however draw a line at singing in public.

Jim Fox, associate director, Carat UK