Here is a question worth sitting with.
If your door drop response rate tripled, what would that be worth?
For most brands I speak to, the answer is a lot. And their second sentence is usually that they are starting to wonder whet60, 20, 17, 3: The Maths Behind Your Door Drop Response Rateher door drop is still the right channel for them.
Response has flattened. Costs keep rising. They have worked the data hard and are not getting any more out of it.Only 3% of your drop are ready to buy. The gap between your current response rate and 3% is the cost of unoptimised creative. Here is what it is worth.
So they optimise the targeting. The postcodes, the planning, the distribution. The print, the format, the production. All of it.
Then they ask about the creative, and the answer is that they have tested it. Different headlines. Different offers. A few formats.
Different executions, or genuinely different arguments? That is where the trap usually is.
Why unoptimised creative still works
Split your drop volume four ways.
Sixty per cent do not know you and do not have the problem you solve.
Twenty per cent have the problem but are not doing anything about it.
Seventeen per cent know they have the problem and are open to solutions.
Three per cent are ready to buy right now.
You plan a door drop. You bring in good people to do their job. Data, targeting, format, volume, postage. Get that right and even unoptimised creative will work, because some of that three per cent will see it. Right place, right time.
So here is the question I would put to most brands running door drops.
Are you getting anywhere near a three per cent response rate?
Probably not.
The gap between where you are now and three per cent is the cost of unoptimised creative. The data did its job. The targeting did its job. The media plan did its job. The creative didn’t.
The seventeen per cent is where the money is
Most creative is built for the people who were already close to buying. That is why it can still work. Good data finds them, a decent offer nudges them.
It is also why so many campaigns get stuck.
The creative is doing just enough to convert the easy bit and not enough to persuade the bigger opportunity.
The seventeen per cent need more. They need the problem framed in a way they recognise. They need the value made obvious. They need their doubts answered. They need a reason to act now rather than later.
And they are not one neat group, so one argument will rarely do the whole job. Some need reassurance that your claims are credible. Some need proof that people like them have already done it. Some need their problem named in a way they had not thought of. Some need to feel the cost of doing nothing.
The three per cent is low-hanging fruit. The seventeen per cent is where the work is, and usually where the money is.
What that is worth
Take a campaign dropping a million pieces at a 0.010 per cent response rate, with an average order value of a thousand pounds.
Assuming those responses become orders, that campaign is worth about a hundred thousand pounds.
Move it to 0.030 per cent and it is three hundred thousand.
Same drop volume. Same postage. Same audience. Same assets. Better argument.
You do not need anything close to a tripling for that to pay for itself several times over.
It matters more this year
Postage is going up by an average of 25 per cent from October.
So everyone is talking about alternative formats, different suppliers, smaller packs, cheaper envelopes, thinner stock. All sensible conversations.
But there is another one worth having.
You are about to pay considerably more to put the same creative through someone’s door. Creative that may look perfectly respectable. Creative that has been signed off by everyone. Creative that might still be starting with the brand, the product and everything the business wants to say, rather than the problem the person picking it up actually cares about.
That creative was already costing you response. From October, it will cost you more.
You should look at production and postage efficiencies. But you cannot keep protecting ROI by making the pack cheaper. At some point you have to make the argument better.
Send me your door drop and I will show you where the response is leaking.
Review my door drop