Door to door leaflets or Royal Mail door drops: which is better?
If you want to get a leaflet into local letterboxes, there are two main routes: Royal Mail's unaddressed door drop service, or a door to door distribution company. Both can work. The right choice depends on how much control you want over where and when your leaflets land, and how much you want to see about the delivery once it is done.
How Royal Mail door drops work
Royal Mail delivers unaddressed items with the regular post. Your leaflet arrives with people's letters, and you choose areas by postcode sector.
How door to door distribution works
A distribution company delivers your leaflets by hand, separately from the post. With Leaflet Media Brighton you choose the streets or postcodes, the dates, and whether your leaflet goes out on its own (solus) or alongside others (shared).
Our process is simple:
You choose the area: streets, postcodes or a radius around your business.
We plan the rounds and confirm the number of homes.
Our trained distributors deliver your leaflets by hand.
Every round is GPS tracked, and our supervisors carry out spot checks.
Things to compare
Targeting. Door to door distribution lets you pick individual streets, not just whole sectors.
Timing. You can line the drop up with a launch, an event or an offer date.
Proof of delivery. Every Leaflet Media round is GPS tracked, so you can see the areas covered.
Extras. Door to door teams can also do hand to hand distribution in busy areas and business to business drops.
Why targeting matters so much
Most local businesses do not serve a whole postcode sector evenly. A takeaway may only deliver within a set distance. A window cleaner may prefer streets of houses over blocks of flats. An estate agent may want the roads where homes are most likely to come up for sale.
When you can choose individual streets, you stop paying to reach people who were never going to become customers. That makes it easier to judge the result, because the leaflets went where you wanted them to go.
A worked example
Say you are launching a new cafe in Hove with an opening offer that runs for one week. The offer only works if the leaflets land a few days before you open, and only in the streets within walking distance. With door to door distribution, you can pick those streets, set the delivery dates around your opening and see the GPS tracking afterwards. If the cafe goes well, you can repeat the drop in the next ring of streets out.
How to decide, step by step
Write down who your customers are and where they live.
Mark the streets or postcodes you can realistically serve.
Check whether your campaign has a fixed date, such as an opening or event.
Decide how important it is to see proof of where the leaflets went.
Ask for a quote with your streets, quantity and dates, and compare what each option gives you.
Common mistakes
Choosing coverage over relevance. Reaching more homes is not better if most of them are outside the area you serve.
Ignoring timing. A leaflet for a weekend event is far less useful if it arrives after the weekend.
Not checking delivery. If you cannot see where your leaflets went, it is hard to know whether a poor result was the leaflet or the delivery.
Frequently asked questions
Can I mix shared and solus drops?
Yes. Some businesses use solus drops for a launch and shared drops for regular reminders afterwards. We will tell you which options are available for your area.
Do you deliver outside Brighton and Hove?
Yes. We deliver in Lewes, Crawley, Horsham, Worthing, Eastbourne and the wider East and West Sussex area.
Can you print my leaflets too?
Yes. Our flyer and leaflet printing service means you can print and deliver in one order.
Questions to ask any distributor
Whichever route you are leaning towards, it is worth asking a few questions before you book:
Can I choose individual streets, or only larger areas?
Can I set the delivery dates around my campaign?
Will my leaflet go out on its own, or alongside others?
How is the delivery checked, and can I see where my leaflets went?
Can you print the leaflets as well, or do I need to arrange that separately?
Clear answers to these questions make it much easier to compare options fairly.
Can you use both?
Some businesses do. A wide, flexible drop can raise general awareness, while a targeted door to door round focuses on the streets that matter most, such as those closest to a new shop. If you combine routes, use a different offer code for each so you can see which one brings in more customers.
Which should you choose?
If you need very wide coverage and timing is flexible, Royal Mail may suit you. If you want to target specific streets, control the timing and see where your leaflets went, door to door distribution is usually the better fit.
Read more about our door to door leaflet distribution, see our leaflet distribution prices, or call 07525 722 427 or email Brighton@leaflet-media.co.uk.
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