Royal Mail Door to Door

You are of course perfectly free to liaise with Royal Mail Door to Door® directly.

The Letterbox Consultancy(TLC) is a reseller of the Royal Mail Door to Door service and so you can buy this type of distribution from us.

With us, you will receive full planning and account management services, including the management of print delivery into Royal Mail, query and complaint handling and response analysis.

TLC provides a range of analysis and insight options, with extensive experience of planning and booking Royal Mail door drop activity, based upon decades in the industry.

If we think your brief can be fully answered by Royal Mail distribution on its own, then that is what we will provide. But if Royal Mail distribution can be further enhanced by one or more additional final mile solutions, possibly plus a print service, then we are happy to offer all of that to you.

And because we operate as a media independent rather than a media owner, you can be sure our proposals have been generated with your best interests uppermost in our minds.

We will manage the entire Royal Mail booking process for you, even liaising directly with your print supplier if necessary, providing you with the time to concentrate on your business.

Royal Mail Door to Door® is the distribution of unaddressed promotional material (leaflets, brochures, envelopes) alongside addressed personal mail and direct mail.

The service delivers to more than 29-million households in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Distribution can be planned and completed at postal sector level, i.e. a selected postcode area such as EN8 9. There are 9,360 postal sectors across the UK, covering an average of 3,099 homes. Postal sector volumes range from 1 to 14,029.

Within postal sectors, distribution is planned at postal walk level, units of “hundreds” of households. Individual postal workers (postie’s), full time employees of Royal Mail, distribute the unaddressed material alongside addressed mail, though some households may only receive the unaddressed items.

Sharing Items

Royal Mail Door to Door allow a maximum of seven unaddressed items at one time though in reality the average is usually nearer to two to three items.

Royal Mail Door to Door do provide a business/service exclusivity clause so that your leaflet will not be delivered with that of one of your competitors. But we recommend that you consult your service provider about restrictions in some business areas before agreeing your door drop.

Distribution Period

Royal Mail Door to Door operates in one-week cycles, 52 weeks of the year.

Any volume of up to 29-million can be distributed in one week, or distribution can be staggered over a maximum of 13-weeks.

Distribution will normally take place over a 6-day period, Monday - Saturday.

Booking Lead Time

Royal Mail Door to Door’s standard booking period is three weeks in advance of the required distribution start date to allow for the delivery of leaflets to them and overall planning of the delivery service.

If you are a seasonal business, or one that is highly competitive, you can book your distribution up to 13-months in advance to guarantee postal sector availability.

Sometimes these lead times can be a headache for advertisers, so it is good to know that service providers working directly with the Royal Mail are often able to reduce the advance period.

Bulk Delivery of Leaflets

Royal Mail Door to Door operate from five regional depots: Rochester (Kent), Swindon, Warrington, Wilshaw (for Scotland) and Belfast.

The leaflets you will be using for your door drop need to be packed into cardboard cartons and labelled for delivery to these depots a minimum of six working days in advance of the agreed Monday start date.

Fortnightly consignments will be accepted.

Reliability

Royal Mail have a legal responsibility to deliver addressed mail to all UK households and employ full time postal staff who are fully trained in delivery.

Royal Mail Door to Door is widely regarded as the most efficient and reliable distribution service in the UK, based upon historical research and client response patterns.

Royal Mail Door to Door offer the greatest depth of coverage in all UK sectors.

Charges

Royal Mail Door to Door has a rate card driven by a combination of distribution volume and the weight of the distribution item.

There are also a wide range of financial incentives such as new user rates, seasonal incentives and annual volume agreements and your service provider should be able to provide guidance to the most appropriate scheme.

Cancellation & Postponement

Royal Mail Door to Door’s Terms & Conditions will confirm their cancellation/postponement policy, but your service provider should be able to provide more guidance.

Under certain conditions, charges may be waived, but you are advised to seek guidance before confirming your contract.

There are multiple targeting options for you to consider when booking Royal Mail Door to Door® distribution. Some may simply be based on geography, but many will use geo-demographic science to select the areas with the most potential for your activity.

You can also simply provide the postcode areas, districts or sectors you wish to cover, and we will quantify them for you by showing how many households Royal Mail cover in those areas.

Alternatively, our mapping software can generate Royal Mail door drop plans based upon drive time or distance criteria from single or multiple postcode locations.

Or you can nominate the volume you wish to drop and we can create a map based upon the nearest households to postcode locations.

If your campaign objective is to engage with look-a-like customers, using MOSAIC7, we can create a profile based upon your existing customer postcode data - EN8 9HU. At that level, postcode data is compliant with GDPR, because it is not single address data.

Then based again on drive time/distance models, we can select the postal sectors with the greatest density of your target market and therefore the greatest potential.

If you can also share additional data such as spend values, that will further enhance the value of our reports.

Royal Mail door drop distribution is booked at postal sector level – EN8 9 – and final mile distribution is carried out by postal workers with Royal Mail door to door. This is considered to be the most reliable and efficient service throughout the UK.

We can also supply team distribution based upon areas dictated by volume, defined map areas or council ward areas, which compliments the Royal Mail door to door option in many cases.

Door drops are not a perfect science, and no final mile supplier can guarantee you every property within your distribution area will be covered.

And even if perfect distribution was achieved, recall studies prove otherwise, even when conducted on the same day as the drop takes place.

Royal Mail door drops are completed by employed postal staff with a legal responsibility to deliver addressed mail to every residential property in the UK. That will include isolated farms, small hamlets and properties on roads with no pavements, where delivery is made by staff in vans or on bikes.

Royal Mail Door to Door® will also cover flats where access may be limited because of security controls.

All of those types of property can present different issues for distribution teams and even where GPS tracking is provided, it does not guarantee full coverage, so in our view Royal Mail Door to Door will offer you the best possible coverage for leaflet distribution in the UK.

Within a reasonable timeframe post distribution, Royal Mail will investigate your door drop distribution queries upon provision of a full postal address. Include the property number, which allows the service provider to identify any obvious reason for omission.

Though Royal Mail Door to Door, allows properties to opt out of receiving unaddressed promotional material, door drops via teams can deliver leaflets if the property does not display a “no junk mail” sticker.

Direct mail through Royal Mail and Royal Mail door drops are two forms of media facilitating the engagement of consumers in their own households, which have many similarities but equally some stark differences.

In recent years the rise of Royal Mail’s partially addressed mail has blurred the lines between the two mediums and is a separate subject.

Traditional direct mail  through Royal Mail is personally addressed material or generic salutation mailings i.e. To The Home Owner, on which postage is paid. Postage charges vary based upon the size and weight of the mail piece and the volume discounts that can be applied.

Direct mail can be called warm or cold. Warm mailings are generally those to a client’s existing customer or perhaps donor list, whereas cold mailings are those prospecting for new customers or donors, or providing information perhaps from your local council.

Royal Mail door drops can also be “addressed” – “To The Home Owner” (note, not by name), but the very vast majority are simply unaddressed promotional material which can take the form of leaflets, brochures, magazines, newspapers, envelopes, coupons or product samples.

There are numerous downstream direct mail providers, but the final mile delivery is always made by Royal Mail.

Royal Mail Door to Door® also happen to be the door drop industry’s largest final mile supplier, where unaddressed promotional material is delivered alongside addressed mail in the main, though door drops can be delivered on their own as well.

Direct mail charges are based solely on postage and can be as little as 20p per item for large volumes on discounted schemes, but smaller volumes can attract charges in the region of 50pm per item.

Royal Mail door drop charges can be as little as 5p again for large volumes, but perhaps 7/8p per item is a more realistic figure to budget from for smaller volumes, although some rural areas may be even more expensive.

Standard Rate Card

Royal Mail Door to Door® has a rate card driven by a combination of distribution volume and the weight of the distribution item.

For volumes up to 25,000 items, 25,000 – 100,000 items and 100,000 – 200,000 items, charges per thousand are fixed.

For volumes over 200,000 items, there are five further volume bands up to 10 million items, where distribution charges are based upon individual postal sector financial values. And there are nine financial bands added to the equation.

So, any client looking to drop more than 200,000 items but without postal sector details, can only be provided with a “guide” charge.

Once postal sector identities have been agreed, a formal charge can be quoted.

For clients looking to distribute more than 10 million items, charges can be supplied upon application.

The charge will however also be determined by the weight of the door drop item and there are five weight bands on the standard rate card: up to 20 grammes, 20-35 grammes, 35-60 grammes, 60-80 grammes and 80–100 grammes.

Royal Mail will also distribute “heavyweight” items from a separate rate card, which similarly has five weight bands between 100 and 200 grammes.

A Royal Mail distribution contract can be spread over a maximum of 13 consecutive weeks and the charge is based upon the overall contract volume.

New User Rate Card

Any client who has not used the Royal Mail service in the 18 months preceding the distribution start date, will be eligible for a new user rate.

This rate card is governed by the same volume and weight bands as the standard rate card and contracts can again be spread over a maximum of 13 weeks.

New user eligibility has a 6-month lifespan from the date of the first distribution, so may be also used on multiple, individual bookings.

On expiry of the 6-month period, charges will revert to rate card.

Further Incentives

In addition to the new user rate, there are a wide range of further financial incentives.

Summer & Winter Incentives

Each year, Royal Mail door to door offers incentives specifically over the mid July-August and late November to late December periods.

Such incentives may stipulate minimum and maximum booking values, may further stipulate minimum incremental volumes in comparison to previous years’ activity and cannot be used in conjunction with other schemes.

Additional Schemes

Royal Mail door to door also offer a range of other volume-based incentive schemes, some of which focus on lapsed and returning clients, test and learn schemes or tactical users.

General Advice

Navigating Royal Mail door to door’s rate card and plethora of incentive schemes can be a daunting and confusing process, particularly to new or lapsed users, who are unfamiliar with the framework.

As an approved Royal Mail door to door reseller, The Letterbox Consultancy has decades of experience in handling Royal Mail door to door bookings, for small or large, local or national clients, so are perfectly placed to help you through this maze.