If you want to reach a local audience without a mailing list, door drop marketing does the job. Firstpointprint prints the flyers for door drop campaigns, so it helps to understand how a campaign actually works before you order.

Door drop marketing means delivering printed material through letterboxes in a chosen area, without addressing it to a named person. You don’t need names, addresses or a mailing list to run a door drop marketing campaign. You choose a location, and every household or business within it receives a copy.

It works well for reaching a local audience quickly. Unlike a digital ad, a door drop sits on a kitchen counter or hallway table until someone reads it, keeps it or bins it, which gives your message longer to land.

Door drops and direct mail both put printed material through a letterbox, but they work differently.

Direct mail is addressed to a named person or business, using a mailing list. It suits campaigns where you already know who you want to reach, such as existing customers or a prospect list.

A door drop is unaddressed and delivered to everyone within a defined area. There’s no list to maintain, which keeps the effort per item lower. It suits campaigns built around location rather than identity, such as reaching everyone within a mile of a new shop.

A door drop campaign usually follows the same steps, whatever the size of the business running it.

• Choose your area. This could be a radius around your premises or specific postcode sectors.
• Design your flyer. One clear message works best, with the offer and any date near the top.
• Get your flyers printed to the right size, stock and quantity.
• Distribute and measure. Book your route through Royal Mail’s Door to Door service, a private distribution company, or your own team for a very local, small-volume drop. A unique phone number, QR code or discount code then lets you track what the drop actually brought in.

Some households opt out of unaddressed mail, so build a small margin into your order quantity rather than ordering the exact number of addresses in your target area.

According to Marketreach, door drop items tend to be read and kept in the home for several days, which is longer than most people spend with a digital ad. That’s useful context when you’re deciding where a door drop fits alongside the rest of your marketing.

Door drops suit any business with a defined local or regional audience. Independent tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians and cleaners often see strong results, since people tend to search for these services only once something breaks. Restaurants, takeaways and local retailers use door drops for the same reason, to stay visible to people who could walk through the door.

Larger businesses use door drops too, particularly around a shop opening, a regional promotion or a product launch in a specific area.

Door drop economics come down to cost per item, so your flyer or leaflet specification matters.

A6 tends to suit high-volume drops best, since it costs less per sheet than A5 or A4. Lighter paper stock also helps keep the cost per item down on larger runs, without affecting how the flyer reads. Single-sided works when you have one clear offer, double-sided if you need supporting detail.

Litho printing usually works out cheaper than digital printing once you’re ordering the volumes a full postcode drop needs.

We print the flyers and leaflets for your door drop campaign, in the size, stock and quantity your distribution plan needs. However, we don’t run the distribution itself, so once your flyers are printed, you’ll book that separately, either through Royal Mail Door to Door or a private distributor.

Get in touch with your quantity and target area, and we’ll advise on the best size, stock and print method for your budget.

Planning a door drop campaign involves a few decisions before you get to print, from targeting to distribution to measuring what worked. To make this easier, we’ve put together a door drop campaign checklist you can use when planning your next campaign.

Download the door drop campaign checklist

The checklist covers:

• defining your target area and goal
• choosing your distribution route
• flyer size, stock and finishing decisions
• getting your artwork print-ready
• planning how you’ll measure results