Door to Door

Door to Door provides the professional and efficient delivery of unaddressed mail, leaflets, coupons and other promotional items directly to the homes and businesses of your potential customers. Our door drop service offers total UK coverage for unaddressed items. This means that we can give you access to over 28 million homes and businesses throughout the UK.

How it works:
Your leaflet or sample is delivered with the mail, so your audience is in the best place, and the right frame of mind to take in your message. Because delivery is made by our uniformed staff and the trusted brand of Royal Mail, your door drop will stand out from other circulars and leaflets delivered by hand or as inserts with local papers.

Non-competing item policy:
Impact is all-important in a door drop campaign, so we do not deliver more than one item from each of our industry category codes at one time. We also limit the overall amount of items we deliver to each postcode to help maintain the ‘stand out’ factor of each item.

Return on Investment
Door drop campaigns can deliver real and measurable results. It is an extremely cost-effective way to communicate your marketing message. Easy to organise and straight-forward to implement, door drops can form part of an integrated marketing campaign, or serve as a powerful stand-alone medium.

You can use them to:

• Acquire new customers
• Boost your sales
• Highlight special events or promotions
• Gather information to build or improve upon a customer database
• Test the effectiveness of your marketing message

A postcode sector is a unit of postal geography containing an average of approximately 2,900 households (e.g. CO1 1). This is the most common unit of geography for door drops.

You can send unaddressed marketing material that falls within the size guides below:

• Minimum size 70 x 100mm
• Maximum size 297 x 210mm (final folded size) 
• Maximum thickness 17mm 
• Maximum weight 100g (only one item between 80 – 100g per week can be accepted for each sector).

These size and weight specifications also apply when items are folded. It is possible to exceed the maximum size at an extra charge of £8.50 for every 1,000 items, but each item must still be no thicker than 17mm (when folded).

All items must conform to the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion, which can be viewed on the Advertising Standards Authority website.

All items must also conform to the British postal regulations currently in force. In the interests of customer safety, we won’t deliver toxic items or nuts and also reserve the right to refuse any items that we feel are inappropriate for unaddressed delivery (for example content unsuitable for children).

At Door to Door we are aware that impact is very important in a door drop campaign, so we have a ‘non-competing item’ policy. This means that we do not deliver more than one item for each of our category codes at any one time. We also limit the overall number of items that we deliver to each postcode to help maintain the ‘stand out’ factor of each item.
You can download the current list of category codes from our document library

You can choose the week within which your leaflets will be delivered, but not the specific days.

Please bundle your items in equal quantities not exceeding 500 items per bundle. Pack your bundles securely, and weigh them to make sure that they don’t exceed 6.4kg. The bundles should then be placed into boxes. Please ensure that all items in a box are of the same weight, and that the box does not exceed 10kg in weight. If required, these boxes should be placed onto pallets. Using the right pallets is also very important. They should:

• Have dimensions that don’t exceed 1.0 x 1.2 x 1.3m high 
• Weigh no more than 1,000kg
• Conform to European Health and Safety standards

Please ensure that all items in a bundle, box or pallet are for the same delivery period, and that items on pallets are securely contained in shrink-wrap. If items are not shrink wrapped on pallets, there is a risk that they will be unsafe to unload at our Door to Door distribution centre, or they could collapse during transportation. If items from different contracts are on pallets, vertical dividers must be used to clearly separate them, and identify which items belong to which contract.

For full handover guidelines please refer to the Door to Door Terms and Conditions

Please label your bundles, boxes and pallets with the following information:

• Royal Mail Door to Door
• Customer’s name (and/or client name if you are an agency)
• Royal Mail Address (where the items will be handed over)
• Delivery date of distribution (this means the start date of delivery to households -not the date that you hand items over to Royal Mail)
• Distribution number
• Leaflet design number
• Number of items per bundle, and the number of boxes
• Please photocopy the label supplied by Door to Door in your contract 
• For an example of the label, please refer to our User guide from our document library and the pictorial label for how to complete the label
• For full handover guidelines please refer to the Door to Door Terms and Conditions

You should hand in your items to one or more Royal Mail Door to Door Distribution centres between seven and eighteen days before your distribution date. We recommend that you hand your leaflets to us at the beginning of this period if possible. When we provide your contract, we will give you a proof of delivery sheet. You should photocopy this, and bring a copy with you each time you hand items in at a Door to Door Distribution centre. One of the team at the Door to Door Distribution centre will sign the sheet for you, as proof that you delivered the items to us.

Door to Door Distribution centres (Walk Bundling Centres) are distribution centres where your items need to be delivered to for processing. There are a total of six Door to Door Distribution centre located in the UK.

Belfast, Perth, Rochester, Swindon, Wakefield, Warrington. If you need help getting to the Door to Door Distribution centres download the  Handover Guide from our document library

Arrivals and Compliance
When boxes and pallets arrive at the Distribution centre, checks are carried out on the sizes and weights of those items. In instances where there are any discrepancies, charges or refunds may be applied.

Processing
Items are sorted into the exact number required for a postman’s delivery route. They are bundled and labelled into containers for despatch to Delivery Offices.

Despatch
Your items will be delivered by Royal Mail to the Delivery Offices located near your chosen postcode sectors. From here, the postmen or women are able to collect and distribute your items.

If you have an account with us you will receive an invoice for your distribution one week before the distribution. You will receive invoices on a weekly basis if your distribution is spread over a number of weeks. Payment can also be made by credit card.

If you do not have an account with us you will be invoiced six weeks before the distribution, and payment must be made within 10 days. To discuss further options for accounts and credit, please contact the Door to Door booking centre on 01865 796981.

We charge for cancellations to reflect the costs we have incurred in processing your booking and (depending on how near your distribution date is) to reflect the chances of us being able to resell the postcode sectors. If you make a cancellation request, we will tell you the cost of cancelling your booking. You will be able to either accept the charges and cancel the booking, or proceed with the booking.

The following cancellation charges apply:

•  With between 24 and 12 months left prior to first day of Distribution you will pay 5% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100
• With less than 12 months and more than 6 months left prior to first day of Distribution you will pay 10% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100
•  With less than 6 months and more than 3 months left prior to first day of Distribution you will pay 20% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100
• Within three months but prior to 14 days before the first day of Distribution you will pay 50% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100
• With less than 14 days left prior first day of Distribution you will pay 100% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100
• Non Delivery of Items: if you fail to deliver your items to Royal Mail for distribution, you will pay 100% of the Delivery Charge subject to a minimum fee of £100.

Agency contact: 
The name of the preferred contact person within the agency.

Booking reference: 
The unique reference number that we give you when a booking is made.

Booking status: 
The stage that a booking has reached.

Booking year: 
The year that your items are to be distributed.

Cancelled: 
Where you have requested and confirmed the cancellation of a booking (or part booking) that you had already made.

Cancellation Requested: 
Where you have requested the cancellation of a booking (or part booking) that you had already made, but it has not yet been confirmed.

Client Code:
A unique code that identifies which client your booking has been made for.

Client Name: 
Applies to the name of the agency’s customer.

Company registration number: 
This is the number given to companies when they register with Companies House.

Confirmed: 
Bookings that have been made and confirmed by customers, with signed contracts.

Coverage: 
Customers can choose whether they want their leaflets delivered to either mainly residential addresses, or all addresses (including business and residential).

Customer code: 
This is a seven digit code that helps us to identify which customers we have a contract with.

Delivery Office: 
An office from which mail is delivered to the local customer base.

Distribution Number: 
The distribution number is made up of three digits, (for example 610). The first digit represents the year that the distribution will take place (e.g. 2006). The next two digits represent the financial week that the distribution will take place (e.g. 10th week), based on an April - March financial year. For distribution due in 2006 the distribution number will therefore run from 601 - 652 (or 653 if a 53 week year).

Door to Door account number: 
This number is provided to each customer who has an account with Door to Door. Agency customers will not have an overall account number, but will instead have a Door to Door account number for each of their clients.

Handling charges:
If we need to fold your items before we deliver them, we will apply a charge of £8.50 per thousand.

Handover:
The transfer of items from a customer to the Walk Bundling Centre.

Handover Points:
The Door to Door Distribution Centres, where you should transfer your items 7-18 days before delivery is due to start.

Invoiced:
Bookings that have been confirmed, and an invoice sent, are referred to as ‘invoiced bookings’.

Item:
The unaddressed mail that you choose to distribute. An item can come in many forms such as leaflets, coupons and other promotional material.

Leaflet design:
Where groups of items within one booking differ from each other in terms of their design or text (e.g. telephone numbers, addresses etc).

Leaflet format:
The leaflet format refers to the weight and the thickness of the item that you wish to distribute.

Part-confirmed:
Where you can confirm a booking and still add to it before it is invoiced.

Postcode Area:
The first one or two letters of any postcode represent the postcode area – e.g. NW, GU, G etc. There are over 120 postcode areas in the UK, and they can be further broken down into postcode sectors.

Postcode Sector:
There are over 9,200 postcode sectors in the UK, which are signified by the number after the gap in the postcode – e.g. the postcode G61 1 LT is in the postcode sector G61 1. When making a booking with Door to Door, customers can choose to distribute to any of these postcode sectors.

Postcode Targeting:
Our targeting service allows you to identify the postal sectors that contain the greatest proportion of your preferred target audience, and therefore elicit the best potential response.

Provisional:
Provisional bookings are held for 10 working days and must be confirmed within this time. For larger bookings this period may be shorter. Where a booking is provisional customers can add or cancel postcode sectors, add or amend delivery dates and edit leaflet designs before the booking is confirmed. No cancellation charges are applied to changes made to provisional bookings.

Royal Mail account number:
This is the account number that we will give you when you open an account with us.

Walk Bundling centres:
Distribution centres where items are processed for delivery to Delivery Offices.

Walk Sortation: A method of sorting items according to the route a postman walks when distributing mail.

Each time your booking is processed we will send you a confirmation email containing an attached Excel spreadsheet with details about your Door to Door delivery schedule. Find out more about what you should do when you receive this email.

Yes. We have an online booking system that lets you create new bookings, search for and edit current bookings, or cancel them if you need to.

Our easy-to-use demo will guide you through using our this online booking facility.