We at The Private Postman believe in the importance of a well trained team. When it comes to executing effective leaflet distribution campaigns on regular basis individual decisions made by distributors on the ground are extremely important. Sometimes the focus in this business can shift to technology like GPS and live tracking systems or the level of oversight from back-checkers and supervisors in the field. Even though these are useful techniques to catch mistakes in deliveries and ensure that the quality of deliveries doesn’t decline if the workforce is not trained correctly the back-checking system will be overloaded. On top of that there are hundreds of decisions made by every single distributor throughout the day that (when approached by a prepared distributor) can save money and time for our clients in ways that are otherwise impossible to achieve.
Some of these decisions are as follows.

Skipping houses

Even though we don’t skip houses in 99.9% of cases, there are specific instances where not delivering can be crucial. We do not give the distributors the authority to decide they will be skipping houses all the time, however there are specific properties we do not deliver to. We exclude all businesses from our distribution cycles. In some London areas distinguishing a business entrance from a residential address can be tough to do. We make sure to train our distributors to know exactly which doors should not have leaflets put through because they might be adjacent to a business or an office.
Our distributors are trained to negotiate access to larger apartment buildings with a concierge. Sometimes the concierge can however decide to deny us access and our Private Postmen need to make a decision exactly when to leave the situation. The trick is to push as hard as possible to gain access to the building so we can deliver but leave before any further attempts at persuasion would be inappropriate.
We basically never skip single door residential addresses. The one exception that we do train our distributors to identify are homes with people that are very likely to make a complaint about ‘junk mail’. Large numbers of ‘No Junk Mail’ signs on the door, hand made signs warning the distributor from delivering or excessive amount of other warning signs and placards could indicate that an individual who is likely to raise a disproportionate amount of complaints might be living at this address. These homes need to be skipped to make sure to avoid unnecessary complications with complaints. We also make sure to mark our distribution maps with addresses that need to be skipped due to previous issues. This requires a level of attention and understanding from our distributors that is above what one might expect.
The last category of addresses that need to be identified and skipped are council properties and local authority housing. These can again be quite tricky to spot and our distributors know what to look for to find signs of local authority ownership. This is especially challenging in London nowadays due to the high numbers of these properties being sold to private owners.

One topic that often comes up when talking to new clients about leaflet distribution are questions about the speed of delivery. There are a few systems that a leaflet distribution company can put in place and depending on the delivery times will depend on precisely the way deliveries are organized.
The way we operate at The Private Postman is mostly focusing on long term regular deliveries with the highest precision and lowest percentage of wasted leaflets possible. We do have the ability to deliver a considerable amount of leaflets in a relatively short time frame but this is mostly an exceptional situation with us. We try to help our clients plan their leafleting efforts ahead enough so that no last minute ramp-up in deliveries is necessary.

The way a typical delivery works is as follows. Each distributor will traditionally deliver one to two walks in our system a day. This would be a maximum of 1600 leaflets. We normally have each one of our Private Postmen and Women deliver around 5000 leaflets a week each. This is done by design. We want to make sure that we take care of our workers and since leaflet distribution is a physical job – fatigue is a factor. Even with the best workers delivering more than the above mentioned number of leaflets in a single day can become very tiring and the delivery quality itself can start to suffer. Normally attentive and diligent workers can start skipping homes and the high standard of delivery we try to adhere to can slip. We make sure that all the leaflets we deliver are delivered in the best shape possible through each door. We do not deliver in the rain to make sure the paper isn’t damaged by water and we never fold leaflets unless absolutely necessary. Our systems of regular weekly deliveries allows for this.

This doesn’t mean that delivering larger amounts of leaflets is a problem for us. We have a considerable number of Private Postmen working with us and as such we can deliver hundreds of thousands of leaflets a month for some of our clients.

Since the only way to get good results with leaflet distribution is constant pressure and regular repeated deliveries we try to help our clients with planning their campaigns.

The clients that are the most commonly affected by the need for very fast deliveries are events companies. Whether these are local church or school event or larger national shows we regularly get calls from event organizers with last minute delivery requests. We normally advise our clients in this line of business to plan their deliveries to take place ideally three weeks before the event. This allows the residents of the area to make plans for the day of the event while keeping some buffer before the event day in case of very bad weather or last minute print issues. This system of deliveries has allowed us to keep long standing relationships with events companies of all kinds and delivering over a million leaflets for some of the finest events in London every year is the result.

Timed Offers and Events.

Timed offers:

We recommend that any offer advertised on your leaflet runs for at least 6-8 weeks after the completion of delivery. Please inform us about any offers printed on your leaflets and the exact dates they are applicable to.

Events: If you are organizing an event and want us to deliver your leaflets to advertise it, we need to know the exact dates of the event at the point of booking. This allows us to gauge whether we can complete your drop in time for you

Deadline:

We need a confirmation email detailing the exact Groups and Walks that you want your leaflets delivered to no later than 11am on the Tuesday of the week of delivery. If we do not receive a confirmation of the Groups and Walks you want your leaflets delivered to by this deadline, your distribution will be automatically moved to the following week

We print or you print

If you print your leaflets yourself we can pick them up from your location or you can arrange to have them delivered directly to our storage unit.

Our delivery address is: The Private Postman Ltd C/O Access self-storage 1 First Way, Industrial Estate, Wembley HA9 0JD. Opening hours are Mon- Sat 8.30am- 5.45pm

Stock Deadline:

We need your leaflets with us on Tuesday the week of planned delivery at the latest. If we do not receive your leaflets by Tuesday the week of planned delivery your distribution will be automatically moved to the following week.

If you are having your leaflets delivered to our storage unit please inform us when the delivery should be taking place. Please include the number of boxes we will receive, the types of leaflets in them, the number of leaflets of each type, If there are more than one, and the number of leaflets per box. Please also ask your printer to use standard stackable A4 paper boxes.

If we are picking the leaflets up from your location

We always schedule our pickups for a Tuesday after 11am in the London area.

We pick your leaflets up free of charge if your order is 8,000 leaflets or more. Otherwise £15+VAT pick charge will apply.

All orders over 50,000 leaflets must be delivered to our above mentioned address by the client

We can offer you our expert advice on what areas will be the most beneficial for you to target based on the services or products you are advertising. We are the only company in London with 30 years of Royal Mail Postman’s experience. No one knows London better than we do. We can also help you with guiding the targetting process and shaping your message to maximize the impact of your campaigns.

You will receive all of our distribution maps for your selected postcodes. Our standard maps are generally 5000 leaflets each with the option of being broken down to even smaller areas for specific targetting. Our maps of 5000 leaflet are called Group and smaller areas of 800-1000 leaflets within them are called walks. There are normally five walks in each Group.

There are many challenges that any leaflet distribution company has to deal with when delivering leaflets around London. There are areas that are difficult to navigate due to a large number of winding roads and confusing mewses. Other areas pose more difficulties due to the numbers of households that are either in inaccessible buildings with locked gates or large apartment buildings.
There are parts of London with a hilly terrain and a set of twelve stairs to every home. All these issues need to be resolved by anyone attempting deliveries of leaflets anywhere in London.
Here are some of our solutions.

Households in inaccessible buildings

We at The Private Postman automatically exclude businesses, council buildings and inaccessible blocks of flats from our system. Most of our clients do not wish to have their leaflets distributed to local businesses and council housing. The reason why we exclude larger blocks of flats from our system is due to the inconsistencies in delivering to these places. Some buildings of this kind will have the front door locked and impossible to access and others will have a concierge at hand. Our distributors are trained to attempt deliveries and negotiate access whenever possible. Deliveries to these buildings are still very inconsistent though and as a result we do not include them in our distribution numbers. This is done to save you money and give you an accurate idea of exactly how many leaflets can truly be delivered in the area you’ve selected. If a large apartment building has letterboxes that are accessible from the street we deliver every time.

Challenging terrain

One of the often overlooked aspects of leaflet distribution is the fact that some areas of London are physically very difficult to deliver. Places like NW3 with it’s hilly terrain or many areas of West London with large staircases leading to every home can be a true test.
We try to avoid frustrating our distributors and risking the possibility of the quality of deliveries being jeopardised by this. We have made a concerned effort to break up the challenging areas to smaller maps in order to not overload our workers. We also pay close attention to the types of leaflets that are being delivered here in order to minimize issues with weight. On top of this we make sure to pay out bonuses to our workers that complete deliveries in difficult areas.

Confusing layout of roads and streets.

One of the lovely things about Central London is that some parts of it have a very village-like feel. Even in the urban centre there are many mewses and winding roads with quaint and historic houses to be found. This also poses some problems for anyone looking to distribute leaflets here. Distributors can get confused about the places they have already delivered to. They might miss streets or not complete certain winding roads in full because of a confusing layout in which they were built over time. We’ve made sure to take every step to avoid these potential issues. We have spent a considerable amount of time mapping out all London areas in detail. We update these maps and compare our records with the day-to-day situation on the ground. We also train our leaflet distributors on how to keep efficient record of the deliveries made. The Private Postman often recruits people from specific postcodes in order to maximize the level of familiarity with a given part of London. Our distributors are the best trained group of people for the job in the industry.

Flyers can be delivered in a variety of ways. They can be handed out to people passing by on a busy street, delivered directly to people’s homes, or left on a front wind shield of a car. Only one of these however is effective and recommended by us. Leaving leaflets on cars is something we not only don’t recommend but actively discourage. This distribution technique doesn’t work and should never be something you do. The results are not more business but only irritated locals and a street full of your marketing materials that turn into paper mush in the London rain.

Delivering directly to people’s homes is what we specialise in. We help our clients design the best and most effective leaflets, find the most appropriate area to advertise their services or products to and build a reliable distribution strategy with repeated drops. This is how marketing with flyers should be done in the 21st century.

That leaves hand to hand distribution as the last distribution strategy to discuss. It is often a technique that we are asked about and most of the companies in our industry still offer it as a standard service. Our main issue with hand to hand distribution and why we no longer recommend it compared to door to door is how cost inefficient it is. Delivering a 1000 leaflets to pre-selected homes should cost about £40+VAT in London. However handing out a 1000 leaflets to busy Londoners rushing to or from work is considerably more expensive. The best price you will be able to get for a 4 hour shift of handing our leaflets from any London based company will be £100+VAT. In this time you can’t realistically expect more than 400-500 leaflets to be handed out. As such hand to hand flyer distribution is up to five times more expensive than well executed door to door campaign.

If you want to know more get in touch and talk to one of our experts.