Is there any reason why daily backups would see a reduction in size?

Yes, this is very normal.

Recently @tgxworld did a massive data refactor that removed a large amount of bloat around the email logs table. This data saving is expected.

One interesting thing though is how image heavy your forum is (cause if it was not the savings would have been even more noticeable) , images really do eat up the vast majority of backups in so many cases:)