The short answer to that is.. it depends.
There are a large number of variable factors that will determine whether any marketing campaign is successful or not and letterbox drops are no different. I’m assuming the real question is ‘can they still be effective?’ The answer to that is; absolutely.
The aforementioned variables include the following:
- The industry you’re operating in
- Areas you are targetting (demographics, commercial vs residential etc..)
- Quality of your flyer or marketing materials
- Offer on the flyer
- Frequency of delivery
- and many more…
Of course, you need to ensure your flyers are actually getting into letterboxes to begin with. That’s why it’s so important to use a good quality flyer delivery service.
So how do you make your letterbox drop campaign as effective as it can be and what kind of results can you expect?
For goodness sake, please avoid doing something remotely similar to this…
Have Something of Value to Offer
This should go without saying. Do not even consider doing letterbox drops if you don’t have value to offer the receiver. That applies with any type of marketing campaign. Whether it’s a discount on goods or services, useful information or an offer for a free consultation, you must have something of this nature on your marketing materials. Without this offer, you’re simply hoping that you’ve hit the receiver at the right time.
To give you an example, say you had a domestic cleaning business and you were looking to promote it and get new clients. Many cleaning businesses will simply do up a flyer with a list of their services and get them dropped to a couple of thousand households. Rarely do they get a response. They are hoping on the off chance that someone needs cleaning at the exact time they’ve read the flyer. Instead, offer 50% off for the first clean or include windows for free with a regular 3 hour service. Instead of throwing the flyer in the bin, the receiver may very well take it inside and put it on the fridge. This leads into the next point…
Presentation
Generally speaking, if you’re a professional business, you’ll want to produce professional marketing materials that represent your brand in a positive light. If you want someone to keep hold of your flyer and put in on their fridge or in their drawer, you’re going to want to ensure your flyer looks presentable and attractive to the eye.
The exception to this is when you want to present your offering as a local, friendly and small-scale operator. We’ve had great success with small service-based businesses by making the flyer look like it was printed at home, without a huge emphasis on glorious design. The text is friendly and conversational, portraying the fact that the advertiser is based where the receiver is based and that they’re offering a personal touch in their service.
This can be a fine balancing act though and you’ll almost certainly put some potential customers off with this approach.
Designs such as these look amazing and represent a business in a professional light. They can work well, though they are expensive to produce.
Frequency
Another determining factor in your success is going to be the frequency with which you conduct letterbox drops.
The more frequent a business targets an area, the more likely it is that their brand will be remembered and thought of next time that customer needs to utilise their service. An industry that does this particularly well is Real Estate. Agents are generally targetting 2-3 suburbs and want to become renowned as the go-to agent in those particular areas. By getting letterbox drops done multiple times each year, they’re ensuring their image becomes ingrained into the minds of potential clients, even if their flyer gets thrown in the bin after a 5 second glance. They’ll get better results if they’re offering value, as mentioned previously.
