Questions about the terms ‘door drop’ and ‘canvassing’ come up relatively often when speaking to our clients. Are these the same thing? How do they relate to pamphlet delivery and leaflets?
The simple answer is that they often mean the same thing. In the UK, “canvassing” can be used with the same meaning as “pamphlet delivery” or “door drops”. There are some nuances to how people use these terms and how this has changed over time.
As a result of this, we’ll try to answer some of the most common questions about canvassing and door drops here. We at The Private Postman are a pamphlet delivery company founded in 2009.
As per usual, we recommend that you speak to a reputable leaflet distribution specialist before you decide on the plan for your campaign and start printing your pamphlets.
- 1. What is a door drop?
- 2. Who uses door drops?
- 3. How does a door drop work?
- 4. What kinds of companies use door drops?
- 5. Why target residential addresses only with door drops?
- 6. How do you track door drops?
- 7. How much does a door drop cost?
- 8. What is canvassing?
- 9. Is there a difference between canvassing and leaflet delivery?
- 10. Can canvassing increase sales?
- 11. Can you canvas council properties?
- 12. Can you target businesses with canvassing?
- 13. How often should I run a canvassing campaign?
- 14. How to do canvassing on a budget?
What is a door drop?
A door drop is a name for an advertising technique that relies on deliveries of pamphlets through people’s letterboxes.
In the UK, the words “door drop” mostly refer to deliveries to privately owned residences and households. This might sometimes include council housing and local authority housing as well.
At The Private Postman, we can deliver leaflets to other addresses like businesses or offices but these services would fall under the more general term ‘leaflet delivery’.
Who uses door drops?
Door drops are commonly used by businesses of all sizes. This includes large multinational corporations, medium sized enterprises, small local companies as well as self employed individuals.
In the UK, door drops have a long history and many local churches, councils and schools use them as well.
How does a door drop work?
Door drop services provide deliveries of flyers through the letterboxes of homes in a selected area. Amongst other things, door drops can be used for driving sales, building a customer base or brand awareness.
What kinds of companies use door drops?
Some examples of the types of businesses and organisations that tend to use door drops are
– estate agents
– restaurants
– tutors
– schools
– veterinary clinics
– roofing companies
– fast food chains
– solicitors
– churches
– local councils
– gyms
– personal trainers
– and more…
Why only target residential addresses with door drops?
Residential addresses are the easiest to target consistently. At The Private Postman, we can organise them in specific geographical areas and we can track deliveries accurately.
In the UK, business addresses, industrial areas and offices tend to take considerably longer to deliver to and are hard to track. There simply are too many external influences in deliveries of this kind. (Locked buildings, uncooperative doormen, etc..)
Delivering to residential addresses is easier as the leaflets can simply be put through the letterbox and deliveries can be tracked with GPS and other tracking methods.
How do you track door drops?
In the UK, GPS tracking has been a standard in door drops and leaflet delivery for some time now.
At The Private Postman we offer our clients multiple tracking systems that work together synergistically. If you want to learn more about this, please feel free to visit our page dedicated to the topic.
How much does a door drop cost?
With The Private Postman, shared door drop prices start at £56/1000 +VAT and solus door drops at £85/1000 +VAT.
The area you are looking to target with your drop will have an influence on the price as well. Prices for orders of over 100,000 pamphlets are often open to negotiations.
In order to keep your costs as low as possible, consider using a simple single page A5 or A6 format for your pamphlet.
What is canvassing?
Canvassing often refers to in-person political campaigning but in the UK, it is also sometimes used as a synonym for leaflet delivery or door drops.
Is there a difference between canvassing and leaflet delivery?
In this context there is no difference between canvassing and leaflet delivery.
Can canvassing increase sales?
If your campaign is well planned and professionally executed, canvassing can absolutely increase sales.
When done well, it can also be a very efficient way of building brand awareness in your local area. Delivering your leaflets to households near your business regularly is one of the better ways of doing this.
Can you canvass council properties?
You can focus your canvassing efforts on council properties as well as privately owned residences.
Your distributor will however likely need to run council deliveries on a separate system. This is due to the very different way deliveries to council properties work.
Most local authority estates have gates that one can access only with the right key. This needs to be negotiated with the council ahead of time. As such, council deliveries tend to run on a different schedule.
The pricing of council deliveries is also often different to standard residential door drops.
Can you target businesses with canvassing?
B2B canvassing is a service that is commonly offered by many flyer companies.
It is generally quite a bit more expensive per flyer delivered when compared to targeting of residential addresses. This is because delivering to businesses is considerably slower and business addresses are often found in smaller pockets around the high street.
As such, canvassing to businesses takes longer and is more labour intensive. As there is more in-person contact during business canvassing, the distributor might need to introduce the kinds of pamphlets he or she is delivering.
How often should I run a canvassing campaign?
Some businesses run canvassing campaigns targeting the same households once a year, some twice and some even more often.
The ideal frequency of repeated drops will depend on your area and the type of business you are running.
For example a newly opened restaurant might want to canvas its delivery area quite intensely before it becomes established.
The main goal here would be to develop mind share in its customer base and make sure that everyone that can order food from said restaurant is aware of its existence.
On the other hand a well established local school might need only a single drop in a year.
When you are repeatedly canvassing the same households you want to make sure to keep healthy rest periods between drops and to vary your designs. Repeated exposure is a good thing but keeping your designs varied will help reduce the potential of exposure fatigue.
How to do canvassing on a budget?
You can take multiple steps to keep the budget of your canvassing campaigns low.
Make sure to target only the areas that are truly relevant to your business. Do not get distracted by other larger areas that don’t fit your target profile perfectly.
Keep the format of your pamphlet simple. Single page A5 or A6 flyers are the way to go.
Run your canvassing on shared delivery. Shared delivery is considerably cheaper than solus. Discuss which areas are available for shared distribution and target these.
