Door drops vs emails: Which is best?

Nowadays, it appears that the internet is everyone’s go-to tool for news, entertainment, advertising, and everything in between! With 3.3 billion global users of social media in 2018, Facebook recorded 50 million small businesses used the site to interact with their customers. This was mainly for the outreach capacity, but email marketing and door drops are still two of the best ways for businesses to contact the correct audience. Which one is best, though? Here, we will take a look.

What is door drop marketing? 
Sometimes, door drop marketing is referred to as ‘literature drops’. These deliveries are sent to specific locations and sent to every building in that vicinity. Unlike direct mail, they are non-addressed marketing content. Due to the fact they are lacking a target audience, they may not be as effective as direct mail leaflet distribution campaigns. However, they are a comparatively cheaper form of advertising and are ideal for gaining coverage of an event or to promote a venue in a geographical location.

Why use door drop marketing?
According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), up to 79 per cent of door drop recipients actually glance at, keep, or pass the leaflet on to a relative or friend. Including a money-off coupon or advertising a use-in-store voucher on the leaflet entices 33 per cent of potential consumers to use your services/buy your products. Without these enticements, 23 per cent of recipients are said to read a door drop leaflet thoroughly. In comparison, 81 per cent of people ignore press or magazine advertisements.

Therefore, although it is more of a scatter-gun approach, door drop marketing can be a very useful — and cheap — tool for any businesses who know the location they wish to target. They don’t have to be a hugely ‘sell, sell, sell’ approach and can instead drive people to contact you on their own terms.

What is email marketing?
To sum it up, email marketing is when a company uses emails to promote their business and create relationships with potential customers, while also informing existing customers on deals and offers. Since the introduction of GDPR in 2018 though, you can no longer ‘blindly’ contact potential consumers unless they have agreed that a business is allowed to contact them.

Why use email marketing?
With 94% of the Internet’s users being active on emails, using this form of marketing can give you a huge audience to target. It’s also extremely easy to track conversions and your ROI using Google Analytics on an email marketing campaign. Therefore, you can determine what the clickthrough rate is and who has opened your emails.  According to a study by McKinsey & Company, email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media.

Is it better to use door drop marketing or email marketing?
In an ideal world, a business would benefit from using various forms of marketing, including door drop and email marketing. This is because you can target a variety of potential consumers (as shown in previous comments). Both door drop and email marketing can be relatively cheap options too.

However, nearly one in four read a door drop piece of marketing compared to a 19.7 per cent open rate for emails and as low as two per cent actually clicking through. Also, with email marketing, the ‘junk’ folder can often limit your open rate. Therefore, for many reasons door drop marketing may be a better option for businesses.

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