Marmalade Trust postal packaging reaches 15% more people with GWP support

Founded in 2013, the Marmalade Trust is an award-winning charity dedicated to raising awareness of loneliness and empowering people to build meaningful connections.

The organisation has supported thousands of individuals and is best known for launching Loneliness Awareness Week in 2017.

Alongside national campaigns, the charity runs connection-focused initiatives such as Christmas Cheer. It provides Marmalade Connections, a phone-based service that helps people find long-term social activities in their local communities.

Christmas Cheer is the Marmalade Trust’s annual campaign designed to ensure no one spends Christmas Day unintentionally alone. The programme matches volunteers with people experiencing loneliness, offering festive meals, doorstep visits, and pre-Christmas gift deliveries.

As part of the campaign, invitations are sent in mid-November, along with small festive gifts and handwritten messages from local primary school children. However, delivery proved difficult when recipients were not at home or unable to answer the door.

Without suitable packaging, volunteers could not safely leave items through letterboxes, leading to missed deliveries, increased postage costs, and additional administrative work.

The Marmalade Trust needed a packaging solution that could be posted by hand through standard letterboxes while protecting the contents and improving the opening experience.

Having worked with GWP Packaging for several years on larger gift boxes, the Marmalade Trust approached the GWP design team for support with a smaller postal pack.

Design Manager, Mike Poynter and Senior Designer Clirenda Deedie developed a bespoke 0427-style box featuring an integral hinged lid. This format was chosen to protect the contents while creating a more engaging experience for recipients.

The final box dimensions – 235 x 165 x 20mm – ensured the packs could:

• Fit through standard UK letterboxes.
• Qualify for Royal Mail large letter pricing under Pricing in Proportion (PIP) guidelines.

Following approval, GWP manufactured a short run of approximately 300 boxes at its Cricklade, Wiltshire site. The boxes were produced using white corrugated board and donated to support the charity’s festive campaign.

The introduction of the new postal boxes delivered clear benefits for the Marmalade Trust.

Firstly, the charity successfully reached 250 people across Bristol and the surrounding areas – a 15% increase compared to 2024. More recipients received their pre-Christmas gift and messages, even when they were not home.

Secondly, the new design reduced packaging costs. Volunteers could post packs directly through letterboxes, avoiding failed deliveries and the need to return items to the office for Royal Mail posting. This also eased the workload for volunteers, helping deliveries run more smoothly.

Georgie Harding, Event Coordinator for the Christmas Cheer project, commented:

“GWP have provided our larger gift boxes for several years now, so when we needed smaller packs for our invites and gifts, it made sense to reach out to them. The boxes they made and donated are the perfect size, great quality, and have made a big difference to our charity. Volunteers find the packs much easier to manage, and feedback from recipients has been positive. As a charity, the letterbox design has really helped us to keep postal costs down”.

Although the Marmalade Trust’s brief was relatively straightforward, the results highlight the value of well-designed postal packaging. By improving delivery success, lowering costs, and enhancing the customer experience, GWP helped the charity to reach more people when it mattered the most.

If you’d like our expert design team to help improve the performance of your postal packaging, get in touch with GWP Packaging today.