When researching how long it takes to deliver 1000 leaflets, you will end up finding a wide range of answers. One of the common numbers that you will see is 8 hours. Delivering a 1000 leaflets for 8 hours makes sense if your delivery is taking places in the countryside or in areas with substantial distances between individual houses.
At The Private Postman, we specialise in leaflet distribution in London which should be considerably faster than this.
In a city like London, the distances between houses/buildings can be as little as 10 feet. Many houses will also be split into multiple households with more than one letterbox or more than one doorbell. (See our policy on delivery to buildings with multiple households here). This should apply to most large cities in the UK.
In this kind of environment, when handled by a competent distributor, 1000 leaflets should take approximately 3 hours to deliver.
Rushing
In the city and suburban environment as described above, there is no need for the distributor to rush or run between houses to speed up delivery. The speed of delivery while walking is sufficient. Rushing can even have a negative effect on the quality of distribution and your leaflet distribution campaign as a result.
Leaflets are not fragile, but they should be delivered in a good state, they shouldn’t be dropped on the ground or folded unless necessary. If a distributor is rushing and is not able to work at a reasonable pace, delivering flyers in a good shape can be difficult to do.
There is no need for this as in most situations a 1000 leaflets will take about 3 hours to deliver.
Other things that can affect the speed of delivery
Location
With that said, there are areas in London where leaflet distribution can take slightly longer. There will be a difference between delivering flyers in the relatively tightly packed environment with easily accessible houses in Queen’s Park, and the more spread out parts of Twickenham or Enfield.
This is, however, unlikely to ever reach anything close to 8 hours per 1000 leaflets.
Size of the leaflets
The physical size and weight of your flyers might have an impact on the speed of delivery as well. This is mostly true in the more extreme cases.
A 6-page brochure on thick paper can take up a lot of space and will require a distributor to restock themselves more often, therefore slowing down their delivery. This will not be an issue if your flyers are in a single page format.
The weather
As a general rule, delivering leaflets in the rain is a bad idea, as flyers can get damaged by water. In a spell of especially bad weather, your leaflet distribution campaign might take longer than expected.
