Deliving leaflets through home letterboxes may seem old fashioned but done in the right way then it can get good measurable results for low cost.
The short answer to the question of whether leaflet distribution works in a time when so much is online, is: “yes”.
Posting leaflets through letterboxes remains an effective marketing strategy, especially when targeted correctly. In the UK, local businesses (e.g. takeaways, fitness trainers, tradespeople, and property services) wanting to reach a specific geographical area still find great success using leaflet distribution to promote their offerings.
I spend most of my life working in the digital world so it may surprise you for me to say that leaflets can definitely play a part even when there are other digital ways of targeting such as Google Ads, social media, email campaigns and more.
However, there is much to consider with both the leaflet itself and how there is a link with the online presence of a business.
On this page I’ll cover:
The first question many business owners ask is: does posting leaflets work?
The answer depends on several factors, including:
Studies have found that leaflet distribution generates response rates of 1-2%, but this can rise significantly with a well-designed leaflet, relevant offers, and precise targeting.
Obviously, 1-2% should not be the target response rate but it is at least a useful benchmark for you to be aware of, especially when thinking about the cost/time (vs what you offer) of delivering to 1000 houses when you may only get 10-20 respond.
However, although there’s that 1-2% figure, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) say that 89% of consumers remember receiving a leaflet or flyer, and 45% will retain the leaflet for future reference. Personally, I doubt the strength of those percentages, purely based on my own behaviour (most leaflets go in the bin), but there must be at least some basis of fact in those statistics.
Leaflet distribution can also be more effective when you target households directly and consistently, creating familiarity with your brand over time, particularly if you repeat leaflet drop to areas. It can easily be the case that someone would bin your leaflet when they initially see it, but repetition of that leaflet could get them wondering if they should hang onto it just in case it’s needed. Typically, food takeway leaflets would be most likely to be kept in a drawer or on a fridge but, depending on the life situation of the recipient, others can be as well. For example, someone may be aware that their guttering needs cleaning at some point but they don’t have the money right now, but they keep the leaflet anyway.
I’ve already said that leaflet deliveries are particularly effective for local businesses with specific geographical needs but it’s worth covering more examples of those:
Those are just examples but you’ll be able to identify with others whose leaflets have dropped through your own door.
It’s worth noting though that leaflet dropping is not necessarily as effective for large national businesses that don’t rely on local traffic. Those types of businesses are more likely to rely on other methods, such as online advertising or mass media campaigns.
However, if you’re a business looking to engage with a local audience, leaflet distribution can be highly beneficial because physical, tactile marketing materials like leaflets often leave a more memorable impression than digital ads, which can easily be scrolled past or ignored.
For many businesses, the affordability of leaflet distribution is one of its most attractive features.
The cost of leaflet distribution can vary based on several factors, including:
On average, in the UK, leaflet distribution costs between £30 to £60 per 1,000 leaflets. This price generally covers distribution, but printing costs will need to be factored in separately, which typically ranges from £50 to £150 per 1,000 leaflets depending on the quality and design complexity.
Further down I sub-divide the costs for diferent options of leaflets delivery.
When money is limited and you have different people trying to get you to spend your marketing budget with them, the ‘old’ printed materials form of marketing may not initially seem as attractive as digital methods of making your business visible.
However, leaflet distribution should be attractive because it’s generally more cost-effective than digital advertising, especially for local campaigns.
Digital platforms (such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads) can be effective but often come with higher costs per click, plus they require ongoing management and optimisation to remain effective, which can increase costs of either your time or the person you’re getting to do that for you.
Leaflet distribution, by contrast, offers a fixed, predictable cost and can be scaled based on your budget. While digital marketing allows for broader targeting by demographics and interests, leaflet distribution offers hyper-local targeting, ensuring your message reaches homes in specific postcodes or neighbourhoods. For businesses focused on foot traffic or local customers, leaflet distribution often provides a stronger return on investment.
Another advantage of leaflet distribution is the absence of the bidding wars that can drive up costs in digital advertising when you end up competing with others who want that visibility. The only winners there are the paid advertising platforms (Google, Meta etc.) who win from ever-increasing costs per click. With leaflets, you’re paying for a fixed cost to reach a physical location, giving you more control over the budget.
Achieving success with leaflet distribution requires more than just printing and distributing leaflets. To get the best results, you need to pay particular attention to effective leaflet design.
If you don’t then it’s a totally wasted opportunity, however many leaflets you get delivered to houses.
Here are my tips for leaflet design …
While it’s a bit cheaper to print on only one side of the leaflet, you’re leaving a lot of space blank, that you could fill up with more to encourage the recipient to keep or act on your leaflet.
We’ve all received leaflets that are on poor quality paper and overall don’t feel right even before we’ve looked at the words and images on them.
Investing just a little bit more in high quality print will help ensure that your leaflet gets a chance to be read.
It may be tempting to cram your leaflet with as much as possible, but you need to focus on the core of what’s going to keep people interested. Ideally, you’d do that by including plenty of space in the design so that it’s easy to read in a good-sized font.
Ensure that your leaflet is consistent with your brand. Use the same colours, fonts, and logos that are used across your website, social media, and other marketing materials.
Your phone number, website address and email should be clear.
You have two sides of a leaflet – really good use of one side is to include several testimonials from your happy clients, or (where appropriate) images of work you’ve done (e.g. tidy gardens).
What can people only get by taking action from your leaflet? Is it a discount, special offer, or something else? Ensure that people have something to quote to claim what you’re offering, and that it’s unique to the leaflet. That way you’ll get a clear picture of how many leaflets led to people making contact with you.
One tip I love is to include three separate QR codes on the leaflet and tell people that only one of them has your highest discount offer. Human nature will get people using their phones to scan all the QR codes (that take them to individual pages on your website), just to get the best discount. The potential customer then thinks they’ve been clever by scanning all three are more likely to make contact when they feel they’ve gained the highest discount possible. An additional benefit of doing this (or even just one QR code) is that you can then ‘follow’ people with adverts online after they’ve been tracked as going to your website – it costs you nothing to have your digital adverts popping up in front of them ongoing, and even then, a very low cost per click if they do click on your online advert in the future (typically 20-30p).
This isn’t quite so important on a leaflet because it’s unlikely that your competitors will be advertising at the same time. However, people may still look around at who else does what you do, after receiving your leaflet.
The solution to this is to briefly summarise your USP within the leaflet, and perhaps add another QR code that lets people read more about your USP on your website.
What this does is tell people you are more worth contacting than others they may be considering.
What sort of USP do you have? This varies hugely, and you may have more than one, but examples would be:
You will know where you stand out compared to your competitors and the leaflet is a good place to showcase that, backed up by even more information on your website.
Once you’ve got your lovely leaflets then you need to get them delivered to the properties that you’ve already identified as being where your potential customers live.
What you do next depends on your budget and there are many options for you to choose from so I’ve listed these in order from free/low cost going upwards …
Rough cost: Often low cost or donation-based.
Upsides: Low cost, local credibility.
Downsides: Quality of delivery can vary.
Rough cost: Typically £20–£40 per 1,000 leaflets as a donation to the group.
Upsides: Low cost, supports the community.
Downsides: Limited availability and may lack professionalism.
Rough cost: Approx. £10–£20 per hour, depending on the worker and region.
Upsides: Flexible, can target specific areas.
Downsides: Harder to track delivery quality (unless GPS tracked).
Examples: www.taskrabbit.co.uk – www.airtasker.com
Rough cost: Approx. £30–£50 per 1,000 leaflets.
Upsides: Cheaper, some level of targeting.
Downsides: Lower visibility as it’s grouped with other materials.
Examples: www.leafletdrop.co.uk – www.jogpost.co.uk
Rough cost: Approx. £30–£50 per 1,000 leaflets, depending on circulation and region.
Upsides: High reach within local areas.
Downsides: May get ignored if mixed with too many other ads.
Rough cost: Approx. £50–£70 per 1,000 leaflets.
Upsides: Trusted brand, broad coverage.
Downsides: Less control over exact timing and drop specifics.
https://www.royalmail.com/business/marketing/mail/door-to-door
Rough cost: Approx. £35–£65 per 1,000 leaflets, depending on location and targeting.
Upsides: Targeted, often provide detailed reports.
Downsides: Prices vary widely by region.
Example: www.dor2dor.com
Once you’ve had your leaflets dropping through letterboxes it’s important to assess whether your campaign was successful. I’ve already referred to some of this above but it’s worth expanding on it …
First, and most important, it’s essential that any prospect-responding people in your business (including outsourced services such as a VA) is keeping a record of every incoming enquiry.
If you have any gaps here then you will never get a true picture of whether your leaflet drops have worked or not.
Every incoming enquiry, regardless of the source, should be logged within your business.
Your leaflet should have a unique discount or offer code that, when quoted, tells you that the customer found you via your leaflet.
All you have to do is record that unique code against any incoming enquiries where the person has quoted that.
Provided the url is simple for people to type, and the leaflet gives them an incentive to go there, having a dedicated website landing page will enable you to track how many people went to that page from your leaflet (even if they didn’t make contact).
The shorter the website url and the more impactful the message, the more people you’ll get using it from your leaflets. For example:
Get 15% off your first order only by going to www.yoursite.com/15
For a tiny cost you can have a dedicated phone number on your leaflets. When people call via that number it will be recorded as that number and you will be able to get reports that tell you how many times that number was called.
You don’t need a separate phone line – it’s purely a virtual number that connects to your existing phone but in the background it’s recorded that the unique number is where the enquiry came from.
If people don’t quote your unique code or use your dedicated number, they may have got to you another way. For example, they could have looked up your website or social media channels and made contact.
In such cases it’s not easy to track those back to the leaflets where they saw that information. This means that, where it’s not obvious how an incoming enquirer found you, you have to ask them:
May I ask how you found out about us?
They may refer to the leaflet but if they say something like ‘your website’ then you could press them further with a follow up question such as ‘oh, did you find us online or via one of our leaflets?’.
If it’s not easily traceable how an enquirer found you then whoever takes the enquiries really has to ask those additional questions.
There are some people who think that you can’t put leaflets through people’s doors.
While it’s true that some industries (e.g. financial advice) state that you can’t make certain claims within your leaflets, there’s still nothing to stop you getting leaflets delivered.
It if was illegal, then it wouldn’t be a service offered by so many, including Royal Mail.
However, you should consider these points …
No junk mail – if someone has a notice that they don’t want junk mail, then don’t deliver to that address. All you’d achieve is annoying someone at that property.
Types of letterboxes – although it’s unlikely to be you personally delivering the leaflets, you do have to take into consideration different types of letterboxes. Some are nice and easy, whereas others can have those annoying brush/bristle type things that make it hard to post anything flimsy into. And your leaflet is going to fall into that flimsy category, regardless of the weight of paper you choose for printing. So you have to consider what happens in such cases – should they be folded in half for example? It’s worth having that conversation with those that may be delivering your leaflets as they may have some tips.
Let’s be honest – none of your recipients have asked for your leaflet to drop through their letterbox!
What if you deliver to several streets of houses and get no response at all? Could you have just chosen the wrong area (although, in theory, you should know which areas are more likely to buy from you!)?
You could do this, for example …
Then track what outcome you get from that. You could optionally deliver again another week, just to reinforce what you’re offering.
Most businesses just do one leaflet drop to as many places as they can. Personally, I think that’s a mistake because you don’t get the chance to drip feed your messaging into the people who pick up your leaflets.
My personal preference would be leaflet drop to the same location two or three times over several weeks and assess the outcomes. If those outcomes are good then expand out the same strategy to other areas.
Leaflet drops still have their place for locally-focused businesses, but I’d recommend repeating the same leaflet to the same homes a few times, purely to reinforce the message.
When your leaflet is strong and contains calls to action that you can easily link back to your leaflets, then it will be easy for you to determine whether you got return on investment from the activity.
The great news is that, aside from getting the leaflets designed (although even that doesn’t need to be costly), the costs of printing and distribution of your leaflets is not high and so it’s certainly worth the ‘risk’ of trying it.
I hope this has been useful to you – please do feel free to comment below if you’d like to.