Following the sell-out success of our inaugural seminar in London, we have organised a follow-up half-day event in Manchester, to take place on Wednesday September 29.

Tickets are only £45, but if you book before tomorrow, September 1, you’ll be able to bring a colleague or client absolutely free.

This is a fantastic offer for a first-class event - don’t miss out.

You can book your place here.

The British Population Survey produce regular, insightful and up-to-date reports on the state of marketing in the UK.

For the three months leading up to July 2010, they conducted over 3,000 face-to-face interviews with representative samples of the adult population, and the resulting British Marketing Survey report, Marketing Channel Trends, makes for extremely interesting reading for those of us in the door drop sector of the marketing world.

In a nutshell, the report provides a compelling reminder of the continuing power of the leafet distribution channel, even when placed against supposedly trendier and more modern means of communication.

The interviewees were asked questions relating to the marketing they had received, responded to, were likely to respond to, and found it acceptable to receive through each individual channel.

In terms of marketing messages, a whopping 90% of people had received leaflets through the door, well ahead of television in second place with the internet down in sixth with only 40-odd%.

More evidence, if any were needed, of the unrivalled coverage levels that the leaflet distribution can ensure.

Such coverage would be fairly meaningless though were it not for a good conversion rate and a decent return of investment, which is why it’s also heart-warming to see door-drop leaflets running out the clear winner in the ‘responded’ chart too, with over 6%.

No other marketing channel makes it over 4%, with a well-established channel like radio trailing in at just 1%.

Leaflets also hold their own very well in the other two questions, about future responses and acceptability.

From the survey, leaflets were the third most likely channel that people would respond to in the future, on around 12%, ahead of email, internet, direct mail and radio.

Over 25% of people also found it acceptable to receive leaflets through the door, the fifth most acceptable channel, but far more acceptable than internet, email, text and telephone, for instance.

All of which adds up to a highly encouraging picture for door drop marketers everywhere. All too often the channel is derided as being somewhat old-hat and ineffective, but this report proves beyond reasonable doubt that the opposite is the case.

Those looking for modern, effective marketing with a high return on investment need look no further.

With tickets costing just £45 (plus VAT), the seminar will take place at Lancashire County Cricket Club on Wednesday September 29. Sessions will begin at 9.30am and finish at 1.15pm, and you can sign up via our LinkedIn page here (login required).

Alternatively, you can book via the SMART-Drop website where you could win a pair of Virgin Champagne Balloon flights (if you do not wish to enter the prize draw please inform us at the time of booking). The draw will be made on the day.

SMART-Drop is a national service that takes door drop targeting to a completely new level, and this seminar will serve as the perfect introduction.

Hear from, and speak to, industry experts who will demonstrate how the wastage of stock and cost within your current direct marketing campaigns can be significantly reduced to fully optimise your door drop carbon footprint.

You can see the full seminar programme here.

There are a limited number of places available for this seminar and we are expecting this to be a hugely popular event. Our London event was sold out a week prior to it taking place! This means you’ll need to book fast – whether it’s for yourself and/or a colleague or a client. It’s an opportunity you cannot afford to miss.

Peter will be part of the panel discussing ‘Distributing Directories in a Mixed-up, Multiproduct, Opt-Out World’, which will take place on day two of the three-day event.

Conference chairman Charles Laughlin, managing editor of BIA/Kelsey, said: “DMS ’10 will bring together the most influential companies and executives in the global directional media business to share their views on the strategies that are shaping the future of this industry. We are fortunate to have Peter among our roster of speakers, and we look forward to his contribution to the conference program.”

The conference is being held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dallas from September 14-16, and over 50 top-level industry executives from around the globe are expected to attend.

We’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Just two days before the May 5 election, David Cameron and his wife Samantha were pictured in the London Evening Standard delivering election leaflets to households in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire.

Evidence, if any was still needed, of the enduring power of distributing leaflets. Even at the election when social media became mainstream and television debates entered the British political system for the first time, politicians relied upon the humble leaflet as perhaps the most reliable means of getting their message direct to the constituent.

After all, while we have infinitely more avenues for media consumption than ever before, most of us still only have one letterbox.

Certainly, judging from some dismissive comments in the marketing press, one or two of our competitors have found it necessary to attempt to undermine the effectiveness of this innovative new product.

Misinformation does no-one any good whatsoever, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to set the record straight.

The negative comments are it seems based on the historical availability of (some) free newspaper sub sector distribution data. They are conveniently ignoring the genuine improvements that SMART-Drop brings in reaching targeted households more effectively whilst eliminating wastage on a national basis.

Perhaps it’s simply a failure to understand the SMART-Drop proposition, because those clients of ours who are actively testing SMART-Drop at the moment would I’m certain paint a very different picture.

We’d encourage advertisers to trial SMART-Drop for themselves and compare it to historical door drop solutions.

Call us now on 0151 647 5535 and we’ll let you make your own mind up.

Conducted by Synovate and reported by the New Zealand Herald, the research looked at the degree to which a demographically representative audience of 319 people engaged mentally with different types of advertising media.

The research team concluded that advertising media fall into three different groups, as detailed below:

1. The annoying: Interruptive, usually irrelevant approaches such as email and text spam, telemarketers and those who approach you in person.
2. The attention-getters: Television is unsurpassed at grabbing one’s attention, but so is unaddressed mail which we have repeatedly found to be highly effective (junk mail certainly being a misnomer).
3. The quiet achievers: Less intrusive advertising that is high on relevance and/or content, such as newspapers, opt-in emails, magazines, direct mail and point of sale.

This research supports what we bang on about at length in this blog - for an advertiser, door drop is an extremely effective way to get your product or service noticed, recognised, considered, appreciated… but most importantly, that bit closer to the ultimate goal of being purchased.

So if you’re looking for advertising that grabs attention without blowing your budget, you could do worse than a leaflet distribution.

Delivery will now be 52 weeks a year; Saturday will be opened up as a delivery day; and the items-per-household weekly cap will be raised from three to four, with further rises on the horizon once Royal Mail has assessed the impact of the change.

All this is the result of an agreement thrashed out in March between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union.

What does this mean in practice?

Well, if you believe some - even the supposedly even-handed BBC - this news will see us all drowning in a sea of “junk mail”.

The truth is somewhat different.

I firmly believe the changes amount to a very positive move, especially for businesses, who do not need unhelpful and fairly pointless restrictions placed upon them at the best of times, nevermind the kind of economic climate we are still in.

New clients will also be brought into the market, which will be good for the long term future of the industry and all its practitioners.

As for householders “being notoriously hostile to junk mail”, as suggested in the BBC article above, I would argue the evidence suggests otherwise.

Indisputably, door-drops work. Used smartly, they will bring a business more sales and more website visits, result in more donations for a charity, or save the householder money.

It’s worth remembering too that door drop in 2010 is a very different beast to door drop in, say, 1990.

Technological innovation has led to more sophisticated campaigns, improving ROI and dramatically cutting wastage. The industry as a whole is far more concerned with recycling.

It’s disappointing when some instantly dismiss a form of advertising that remains the lifeblood for many, many businesses. They are the people who will be cheered by Royal Mail’s Door to Door changes.

Delegates from as far afield as Spain, Germany and Slovenia joined the sell-out crowd for the inaugural half-day event, of which we were a co-organiser.

Several high-profile agencies and household names were represented from industry sectors including retail, travel, charity and finance.

Our very own Peter Rand spoke about “Planning & Implementing Small Area Targeting & Distribution”.

Feedback to the event has so far been extremely positive, with some delegates already signed up for SMART-Drop and many other expressions of interest.

If you couldn’t make this seminar, we are looking into the possibility of holding more seminars elsewhere in the country - watch this space.

For further information on this breakthrough in targeted leaflet distribution, call us on 0151 647 5535.

We’ve written before about the importance of leaflet distributions in political campaigning, and why this advertising channel is so well-suited to constituency communications.

But our argument was never more succintly made than by this new website, which over the past few weeks has sought - very successfully, I might add - to map leafleting activity by constituency. Something of a collision of social and traditional media, you might say, and the results make for fascinating reading.

For instance, all three of the main parties seem to have been extremely active leaflet distributors in Oxford and Cambridge. The constituencies of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire have received the most Conservative leaflets, while Labour have delivered most to Oxford East and Cambridge. The Lib Dems haven’t held back in the university towns either, with Cambridge and Oxford East both high up their leafleting league table too.

It’s easy to see why Oxford East is being so targeted - there were only a few hundred votes between Labour and the Lib Dems in 2005 - but Cambridge is one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country. It would be interesting to know why this seat is evidently being so fiercely contested.

In terms of leaflet subject matter, the economy has dominated for both Labour and the Conservatives, while the Lib Dems have concentrated mostly on local issues.

Those with an interest in the idiosyncrasies of British democracy can have a field day on this site - take a look at the full list of parties out distributing leaflets. If the top three don’t fit the bill, perhaps you live in a seat where the Best of a Bad Bunch party are running, or even the Dungeons Death and Taxes Party, The Grumpy Old Men Political Party or Pirate Party UK. Then again, there’s always the Movement for Active Democracy (MAD)!

Coming back to the point, it’s clear that the leaflet distribution is alive and well in British politics. No other form of advertising is as good at getting important information into the hands of the majority. No other channel is better suited to targeting on a precise constituency-by-constituency basis, where one leaflet accidentally delivered the wrong side of the boundary is completely useless.

It’s my belief that whoever wins tomorrow, the leaflet distribution will continue to play a central role in elections for decades to come.

Happy voting!