ARE YOU SIMPLY LOOKING FOR ROYAL MAIL DOOR TO DOOR DISTRIBUTION?
If you're looking to find out about the Royal Mail distribution service and to book leaflet distribution, please CLICK HERE, otherwise read on...
This is probably the most revealing and fascinating research blog I have written so far. The way the Royal Mail operates is quite unbelievable; read on to see why.
All too often we get calls where a potential new client questions if we are 'cheaper' than the Royal Mail, and why they should use us instead of going to them directly. I have written this so you can see the differences between the Royal Mail and Mr Flyer, and choose for yourself which is best for your business.
The information on the Royal Mail is accumulated from studying their website, reading their terms and conditions, reading all their special reports on door-to-door distribution and having long conversations with their door to door call centre regarding the distribution. Please note, this blog was originally written July 2015 and updated November 2017, January 2020 and in June 2022 so it remains relevant for you.
Round 1: Leaflet Distribution
Both the Royal Mail and Mr Flyer now only offer a shared distribution. This is where your leaflet will go out with other flyers to the same addresses. As you will read more on below, Mr Flyer became a partner with the Royal Mail in 2018, and from summer 2019 now use them exclusively. Therefore, the advantage here (over a lot of other leaflet distribution companies) is that people are more likely to look at your flyer because it feels more personal.
Incidentally, research from MarketReach, found, "96% of all mail was looked at during lockdown". With both businesses, your flyer goes out with up to 4 other non-competing flyers and the mail. This is dependent on what is booked in at the time - in some cases your flyer will be delivered on its own (solus distribution). Equally, we both provide distributions as a nationwide service.
Royal Mail: When going direct, you have to first register as a new client with Royal Mail, complete application forms, fill out booking forms, and wait on communication back and forth with Royal Mail about what category to put you in for distribution. Then you have stringent deadlines to meet for getting the print to Royal Mail (some clients we have spoken were told that Royal Mail needed the materials one month in advance).
Mr Flyer: As an affiliate with the Royal Mail, we do all this for you. Our ISO9001, ISO14001 and ISO27001 operations are set up efficiently so that we fill out all your forms, and design and print your flyers (or other printed marketing material). In addition, as an affiliate, we have up until 2 weeks prior to the distribution to get your flyers to the Royal Mail - so your flyer can go out sooner. All in all a much smoother and more efficient process.
Round 2: Prices
When this blog was first written, we offered three distribution services (solus, duo and shared). Due to minimum wage requirements and the difficulty of distributing in certain locations, charging anything less than £100 per 1000 became unsustainable. Now we use the Royal Mail for our door to door distribution services, which is a shared distribution (we also provide direct mail marketing services ).
Royal Mail: The most you will pay per 1,000 is £65.99 (+ vat) correct as of 8/3/21, which decreases slightly based on quantity. These prices are based on printed items weighing less than 20g each. Heavier items do cost more per 1000. Importantly, this does NOT include designing, printing, boxing, palletising, collating, print of and labelling or couriering to their WBC (or multiple WBCs).
Mr Flyer: We charge the same standard rates as going to the Royal Mail directly for the distribution element itself. The minimum order is the equivalent of 7,500 flyers. On top of the base distribution rate we charge an all-in-one price to cover booking in (which can be very time-consuming on larger jobs), design, print and preparation of the flyers. These must then be packaged and labelled to stringent Royal Mail requirements and couriered to the appropriate Royal Mail distribution centre (WBC), which is again part of our all-in-one service.
Round 3: Flyer Design
The design of your flyer is a vital component to the success of your entire flyer door to door campaign. You're probably not going to see any return on your investment (ROI) if it looks nice, but is not actionable.
Royal Mail: They don't offer it directly; they recommend a company called Romec. They gave me a number to call. They couldn't quote me over the phone when I spoke with them. I had to send an email and wait up to 48 hours. I did receive it on the same day, but was shocked by the price – read the print part in Round 4.
Mr Flyer: We have an experienced in-house graphic design team to help you with leaflet design or other printed items (e.g. brochures, postcards etc.). We build this value into our combined marketing service for you. Of course, we will ensure it aligns with your existing branding, features, essential offers, products or services you want to promote. We can even offer advice on some of the copy (effective headlines, proven call to actions for your industry, and so on).
Round 4: Printing
Not only is the price important here, but advice on which paper to use depending on your type of business is essential.
Royal Mail: Once again, this is outsourced to Romec, and I had the same long wait for a quote applies. I requested a quote for the design and print of 20,000 A5 double-sided flyers on 130gsm gloss, and it came back at £607.06, including design. Bearing in mind this was back in 2016, way before the surge in paper prices of the last few months, I expect this is now even higher.
Mr Flyer: With our print, we can help recommend the right paper based on budget and type of business. As mentioned previously, we build the print cost into the overall marketing service for you. In addition, our turnaround time is very fast, meaning your flyers can go out much sooner.
Round 5: Proof, such as GPS tracking
Many new prospects ask the question: 'how do I know my flyers will get delivered?'
Royal Mail: Don't offer any form of tracking. As you can imagine, however, most flyers are delivered along with the mail. To dispose of mail is a serious criminal offence. Therefore, the likelihood of the leaflets being disposed of is much lower than a dodgy distribution company using 'self-employed' people on illegal pay. In addition, the Royal Mail has excellent employee loyalty and pride, so your flyers are generally in very safe hands.
Mr Flyer: We no longer provide GPS tracking with every distribution campaign as we now use the Royal Mail. However, where there is a very rare issue, we investigate this fully on your behalf and ensure a fair resolution is made.
Round 6: Ease of booking/campaign consultation
You are busy building your business and simply want to hand the stress and organisation over to the experts, right?
Royal Mail: Once you decipher their ‘Area Ranking Report’ you have to figure out how you want to proceed, then you fill in their arduous booking form, then eventually you have to adhere to their 11-point instructions as per section 4 of their terms, otherwise you risk your flyers not been delivered at all; this includes you getting your flyers to them. However, once you are set up, things are relatively easier. Most printers will struggle with the requirement to have your flyers boxed weighing no more than 10kg – which is a pretty small box! The boxes must then be labelled appropriately, palletised (where appropriate) and delivered to the appropriate WBCs (sometimes to multiple WBCs where your target areas cross WBC boundaries).
Mr Flyer: With a 5-minute call, or quick email your door to door distribution campaign can be booked with us. We ask a few questions so we can establish things like target audience, quantity, thoughts on your flyer design and print, ideal dates, etc. From this we plan and implement your distribution for you, hassle-free.
Round 7: Areas covered
Generally, independent leaflet distribution companies only cover a radius of where they are based. Other times they may outsource to other independent companies to cover additional areas.
Royal Mail: They massively have the upper hand here on any other distribution company because they are entirely national, covering every postcode sector you can think of - over 29 million addresses. The Royal Mail also have the logistical expertise to reach those farmhouses with a 2-mile-long private driveway that no independent company will typically entertain! They also often have special access to apartment blocks, which often eluded our distributors. So logistically, the Royal Mail is quite unbelievable – hats off to them!
Mr Flyer: When I first wrote this blog, we were restricted to West Yorkshire only - now, thanks to our partnership with Royal Mail, we too are nationwide, covering the same 29+ million addresses.
Round 8: Targeting
If you are a high-end bespoke tailor, it would 'be fitting' to target affluent areas. So let's see if both companies can do this for you:
Royal Mail: The Royal Mail use the sophisticated Mosaic software (provided by Experian) to assist with targeting down to a postcode sector level (to go beyond this you need Direct Mail or Partially Addressed Mail). This is very helpful if you're unsure where your target audience lives and can make a national campaign a straightforward planning process.
Mr Flyer: We, too, use the same Mosaic software used by the Royal Mail. However, the software is only helpful if you know how best to utilise it. We can help you establish the most appropriate demographic criteria to consider, the locations to include and how to interpret the reports. Usually, we analyse and summarise them for you, along with providing recommendations. For example, many clients have come to us with a small marketing budget, asking for a "5-mile radius" of their location. Whilst this is logical, as they may have existing customers travelling 5 miles or more to use them, a 5-mile radius will typically cover in the region of over 70,000 households, which a small budget is not likely to cover. We can offer advice on what would be best for your business in terms of narrowing this down to reach those people where they are most likely to respond.
Round 9: Client feedback
I know when I'm looking to use a business I look at their client feedback through testimonials and star ratings on various websites. Let's see how they compare here:
Royal Mail: Reviews on Trustpilot. (Note: this is for Royal Mail as a whole, not just door to door). I found a snippet on a forum regarding Royal Mail's door-to-door service:
"I've done Royal Mail door drops…They are just swine - they question everything from the size of the bundles of your flyers to what colours you use and how they are stacked on the pallets. You can never actually speak to anyone. You spend ages trying to chase people down by phone to get a definitive answer. Then they insist you were given the wrong information from their website..."
As stated above, the poor star rating is not based on door-to-door specifically but on the company as a whole. Most seem to be about lost parcels or disappointing customer service by individuals. On another TrustPilot page, the rating is up at a much more respectable 3.9* rating, which today has a whopping 98,545 reviews!
Mr Flyer: Take a look at this link to see we always get 5 ratings on Reviews.co.uk (currently stated as a 4.97* rating).
A recent testimonial we received was from Perrys Mazda in Huddersfield:
"Mr Flyer provides an outstanding and extremely well-tailored service, giving helpful and honest advice from the offset. From a repeat distribution Mr Flyer have recently carried out for us, we have already sold six cars, what a fantastic result! We are extremely happy with the professional service provided by Mr Flyer and look forward to working with them in the future."
And the winner is...
When I wrote this blog initially back in 2015, I biasedly heralded Mr Flyer as 'winners' based on our in-house own door-to-door services. However, since then, I have kept the Royal Mail in the back of my mind, captivated by their incredible logistical ability to deliver to every single address in the UK. There was a time when I wanted to see Mr Flyer being able to fulfil this with flyers. Unfortunately, with the government continually loading small businesses with more and more challenges, such as minimum wage increases, pensions, NI, legal restraints and so on, we reluctantly acknowledged it was not financially viable to employ our own distributors – certainly not at a reasonable price point for our customers.
But we certainly didn't want to stop helping our customers grow: both locally and nationally, and we did want to utilise our many years of print marketing experience, to see our customers thrive. As such, we decided to create a strategic alliance with the Royal Mail so that we can provide you with our same expertise on a national scale.
We remove all the hassle and plan your campaign for you without paying a penny more than you would if you went to the Royal Mail direct.
Mr Flyer's goal is to help build your business and brand.
Contact us today if you would like to organise a hassle-free and cost-effective door-to-door distribution campaign with a multi-award-winning and ISO-registered company.
