In its new Annual Door Drop Industry Report 2019, the Data & Marketing Association's data showed that around £260m was spent on door drops in 2018, representing a slight 1.9% decline on 2017 but higher than the figures from 2015 (£247m).

The organisation said a degree of stability was also seen in the annual volume of total door drops, which reduced slightly from 5.7 billion to 5.4 billion year-on-year.

When compared with other media channels, the DMA said 2018’s annual door drop spend further highlights that the channel continues to secure its proportion of the total marketing spend, while other traditional print-based media have seen marked declines over the last seven years.

The long-term trend for door drops is also looking bright, with positive gains expected for the channel over the coming years according to the DMA.

The report also found that, per household, the number of door drops in 2018 reduced to fewer than four (3.78) per week for the first time since the study began, which the DMA said highlights the increased level of targeting used with the channel.

“With targeting you can reach exactly the right person at exactly the right time. Even within more general postcode areas you can still target based on where a store is opening or in an area where you have seen recent sales. Or vice versa, you could target a postcode where you’re not seeing sales,” said DMA head of insight Tim Bond.

Additionally, the total weight of door drop material sent fell by more than 4,000 metric tonnes year-on-year. This represents an 8% reduction in the overall door drop weight over the last five years.

“We’re seeing that people are tending towards smaller items; big booklets are not being sent quite as often as they used to be,” said Bond.

“There’s also the ability to be creative within the medium – just because you might be sending an A4 leaflet with maybe a couple of folds, there’s still room to experiment with the copy, the layout, the visual, and also where those folds are.”

2018 also saw the launch of JICMail, a new ‘currency’ for measuring advertising mail engagement. JICMail figures found that door drops have far greater impact than previously assumed, with an individual door drop seen by 1.05 people in the home on average – giving campaigns an additional reach of 5% – and then interacted with 2.77 times over the course of a month.

“JICMail is able to independently verify what many people who have utilised door drops for many years have long since known,” said Bond.

“It also enables planners to actually plan door drops into a multichannel strategy, which is only going to be positive for the channel, particularly for things like acquisitions where you don’t have any personal information and you can’t necessarily source it in the same ways that companies did in the past.”

Additionally, 64% of door drops are looked at immediately upon arrival and 15% are put aside to look at later, according to the JICMail data.