Measure The Success Of Letterbox Drops

In any advertising you need to be very clear on the outset what you are trying to achieve through the advertising campaign and then design the campaign to try and achieve that result. Where possible you want to be able to measure the success of letterbox drops.

Here are a few campaign types and how you might change the advertising to suit that campaign.

1. Branding

This can be costly because the aim isn’t necessarily to gain immediate measurable sales from the activity. The idea is to make the consumer aware of your brand and keep you front of mind. This is especially useful for a business that is launching and is new to the market place. You want consumers to know who you are so that when they see other advertising or walk past your shop they recall the previous advertising. This works well in conjunction with other branding, so you would have at the same time an ad in the local paper, some Facebook advertising, a sign or billboard and then your letterbox drops with the flyers. This works because people see the billboard, drive past your shop signage and then get home and see your letterbox campaign. This helps to cut through all the other advertising noise and hope that they take in your advertising.

The problem with branding is that it is almost impossible to measure the return on investment (ROI), so we are spending money without a guarantee of return and without the ability to really know if it was successful or not. It is ok to do a branding campaign as long as you have decided on the outset that this is what you are trying to achieve.

2. Experience

Rather than having a broad, ‘we want more customers’ approach you might be able to break down your current customers behaviour in such a way that you can apply that to future customers. For example if you owned a local cafe you might know that 60% of people that come and have a coffee in your cafe are repeat customers. Therefore we can assume that as long as we can get people in to try your coffee chances are they will come back. In this instance it would be a great idea to do a letterbox drop offering a free coffee if they present this voucher.

This is a great offer for three reasons. Firstly we are offering people something for free, and people love that so we know that it will leave a positive impression. Secondly we know that if we can get them in the door you will get repeat business. Finally you can measure the results and therefore the ROI. You know how many flyers were distributed vs how many people brought a flyer in to claim the offer.

This also works with samples. If you have a physical product to sell giving consumers a sample to try and can often lead to a future purchase, because they tried the product and liked it.

3. Front of mind and timing

Timing is important when sending a letterbox drop. If you are an accountant then sending out tax return deals is best done between June and July when people are thinking about getting their tax done. It is also good in October for those people who have left it to the last minute!

Advertising fire wood in December is probably not going to get you much work, but Fire Wood in June when people are cold might get you some great business straight away.

Try putting something in the letterbox that will help people keep you front of mind. A fridge magnet is always good, while they are more expensive to produce you have a better chance of people keeping them for the future. Keep in mind this makes it difficult to always understand the true ROI because it may result in calls 6 or 12 months down the track.

4. Repetition

Repetition, repetition, repetition!! Of course this costs more, but can be a whole lot more effective. Rather than doing a greater distance in one go why not try a few smaller drops to the same people. For instance rather than doing one big drop to 6,000 people why not try dropping to a smaller group of 2000 people, but doing it 3 times over a few weeks.

Have you ever done this yourself? You see a flyer and think ‘oh that is interesting’ and then it gets lost or thrown out. Then a few weeks later you see it again, and think ‘oh yeah I was going to do something about that’ but again you get busy and nothing happens. Then you get a third flyer in the mail and this time you call the number.

If you have questions or would like to talk to us about your next campaign and how you can make it as effective as possible please contact us!