There is no steadfast rule but naturally, as a business, you need to factor in a given lead time to allow recipients to take you up on your offer or in some other way, action your flyer. Demographics, seasonality and the service offering itself will also logically be a key consideration. There is a delicate balance between “too early” and “too late”. Admail has seen a lot of clients choosing to leave a flyer distribution until a few days prior to an event or similar; their logic being “front of mind”. This may work however experience would dictate that a place-holding flyer distribution some weeks out followed by another one just prior to the event/discount/sale etc is likely to yield better results.

Demographics ­– depending on your target audience, you will need to consider the age, incomes and purchasing intent of your audience. Some age group brackets may need a longer decision process, whilst other audiences may have more disposable income and be time poor so may be more reactive and impulsive in nature.

Seasonality ­– this is particularly relevant to the service and trade industries such as DIY, garden services, Christmas, Halloween, heating providers etc and businesses should consider what is the best time to plan a flyer distribution campaign for maximum efficiency. As a broad rule, work back from your busiest seasonal period and factor in several weeks or months ahead of this. Always remember to factor in the design and printing time too.

Service/Product Offering – higher priced offerings or products will naturally take a longer period to mature into an enquiry or sale as they cannot be impulse buys. Again, businesses need to calculate – based on previous experiences – how long it might take for an initial flyer drop to develop into an intention to buy. These sectors may also benefit most from drip-feeding a flyer drop campaign. A two (or more) stage advertising campaign is one where, after the initial campaign, a further drop is then run to nudge the original recipients and push your brand back into the forefront of their minds.

A very important consideration is that while parts of the population are experiencing digital marketing apathy eg an overload of email spam, bots, push posts etc, traditional mail marketing is a constant means to reach your audience.

Contact Admail for more information.