Green Account Based
One to One Marketing

The challenge

Royal Mail is the UK’s greenest delivery partner for letters and parcels, with on-foot delivery helping them achieve half the carbon per parcel of their competitors. They were looking to use this unique selling message to open the door with 10 large, multi-site retailers. It needed to sit alongside the wider Royal Mail cross-channel green campaign and the consumer Footprints TV ad, featuring ‘light on their feet’ posties.

To establish our target list we extensively researched the UK’s most sustainable multi-channel retailers, including their initiatives, ESG reports, green awards and credentials. We overlaid these brands against Royal Mail’s priority target list, generating 10 targets.

The piece needed to be engaging enough to achieve instant cut-through with senior decision-makers, while still sharing the breadth of the green message, including Royal Mail’s net zero by 2040 strategy.

Our strategy was to position Royal Mail as a highly sustainable, forward-facing carrier that could offer large retailers a greener delivery service than anyone else.

The creative

This was the perfect opportunity to build a specialised Account Based Marketing (ABM) programme. We developed a selection of super personalised ‘boxes within boxes’ – the larger box the equivalent volume of CO2 produced in a typical delivery, and the smaller box half the size to showcase the approx. 50% less CO2 produced by a Royal Mail delivery.

The boxes were highly sustainable, using eco-friendly inks and materials. The boxes and accompanying landing pages – accessible via QR codes – were designed using the brands’ own colours and written with their own tone of voice. Messaging focused on the parallels between the brands’ ESG strategies and Royal Mail’s net zero strategy, demonstrating how Royal Mail could help deliver their green objectives.  Some landing pages featured vox pop interviews with real shoppers, sharing how important they felt green deliveries would be for the brand.

The boxes were hand delivered by a dancing postie, echoing the Footprints TV ad and wider green campaign which featured ‘light on their feet’ posties.

To keep the ABM activity highly sustainable, we focused on targeting the two key decision makers in each brand: the Director of ESG and COO. The ESG position was essential to influencing the carrier decision, whilst the COO was likely the ultimate decision-maker.  We manually researched these individuals to find out who they were, where they were based and when they would be in the office, to ensure the hand-delivered piece would not get stuck at reception – minimising waste and maximising chances of success.

the results

After the boxes were delivered, 60% of the brands scanned the QR codes on the boxes to visit the landing pages, and Royal Mail have had meaningful contact with 100% of the brands, booked meetings with several and been invited to tender by 3. As a direct result of the campaign, one brand has even entered a paid trial with Royal Mail. The estimated sales pipeline offers an ROI of around 420 times the cost of the activity.

“The campaign was a great success in opening doors for us and the pipeline looks incredibly promising.”  – Sandeep Dhak, Marketing Communications Manager, Royal Mail

Anecdotally, Royal Mail’s prospects loved the campaign:

“You’ve definitely got my attention!” – Contact at IKEA

“I think the whole team is impressed at the creativity and impact of the messaging! Certainly one of the more creative proposals I have ever received, and good messaging on the environmental side of things. It would be great to see some pricing as well (and if Royal Mail can be as creative with this!)” – Contact at Disney

“I was able to take the box up to our floor where the team were very impressed and appreciative of all the efforts you and your team had gone through! We definitely will be looking into how Burberry can hopefully use your services in the near future.” – Contact at Burberry