Shop early. Send early

We are morphing our 139-year-old ‘Post Early for Christmas’ campaign into a social-media led campaign designed to encourage early online Christmas shopping.

‘Shop Early, Send Early for Christmas’ is an evolution of the traditional ‘Post Early for Christmas’ campaign that we have promoted during the busy Christmas period for well over a century.

eBay and Post Office have both given their backing to the campaign, which is designed to help us manage the huge volume of parcels that are expected to peak over the festive season.

The Post Early for Christmas campaign was first launched in 1881 before developing into a sophisticated poster-led campaign in 1934 geared towards helping us manage increased volumes of Christmas cards. By encouraging customers to post early, Royal Mail sought to spread the mail more evenly throughout the festive period. This in turn helped ensure everyone received their mail in time for the big day.

Fast forward to 2020, Shop Early, Send Early for Christmas messaging will be launched across social media in order to target online shoppers as they go about ordering gifts for Christmas. It will also feature in a postmark campaign, with the slogan gracing all stamped mail delivered over the festive period.

The campaign will encourage customers to get ahead of the traditional Christmas rush – both by shopping online early, and by sending parcels and letters to family and friends early. Christmas is typically the busiest time of the year for parcel deliveries, but this Christmas is expected to outstrip prior years’ festive peaks.

Chief commercial officer, Nick Landon, said: ‘This year, we recognise that many people won’t be able to visit friends and family as they usually would, so we’re preparing to play an even more important role in delivering our customers’ presents and cards for Christmas.’

Murray Lambell, general manager of eBay UK said: ‘Despite the obvious challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions in place in the run up to Christmas, we’re gearing to help our customers choose the perfect gifts in a safe and convenient way.

‘Reassuringly we’re already seeing a different, earlier Christmas shopping pattern, and we would echo Royal Mail’s request to shop earlier online than usual this year, in order to ensure that deliveries are spread over an extended time-period.’

Mark Siviter, managing director of Mails & Retail at Post Office, added: ‘At Post Office, we anticipate a 50 per cent increase in customer sessions during the festive peak, well over 15 million sessions a week. Therefore, we’re asking customers to post early.’