« No Junk Mail » stickers: good news for the return on investment of folder media!

Either as a result of personal initiative or distribution by associations or city councils, the last few years have seen an explosion of the number of “No Junk Mail” stickers appearing on mailboxes, indicating that people don’t wish to receive unsolicited marketing mail.

“No Junk Mail” facts

If the number of “No Junk Mail” stickers grew strongly at the very beginning of the phenomenon, their accession seems to have stabilized and their impact on the distribution of folders, news and commercial information to households has been negligible.

Could the “No Junk Mail” stickers be good news for advertisers using mailboxes?

Not giving out folders to consumers who do not want them and clearly signal so is excellent news for advertisers! If distributors respect the numbers, this can significantly increase the return on investment as only “useful” folders are made and distributed.

Even with “No Junk Mail” mailboxes an advertiser has access to 85% of households in a distribution zone, which declines to a still significant 70% of households in the most extreme of cases. The folder therefore remains an important form of mass media and still plays a major role in generating traffic at points of sale.

Negative repercussions for distributors

If it’s good news for advertisers, this isn’t the case for the distribution companies. The growing number of  “No Junk Mail” stickers is a headache for them: the distributor’s round is still the same distance but they deliver a smaller number of copies. Of course rounds can be enlarged but then let’s not forget profitability: bigger distances for the same number of copies…

What strategy for the brands using mailboxes?

The first thing is to make sure the distributor took into account the number of “No Junk Mail” mailboxes when they estimated the number of copies to be distributed to a given geographical area. Logically, with the appearance of “No junk Mail” stickers, quantities should have been reduced a little over the last 10 years, even when taking into consideration demographic growth in the areas.

We’ve seen that even with the rise in the number of mailboxes displaying a “No Junk Mail” sticker, mailbox media remains an important local mass media for advertisers that can equally be combined with other complementary local media, for example digital solutions produced by companies such as Bonial, Promodéclic or Pubeco.