Firstly, why letterbox? It’s strange the way we adopt a phrase for describing something that it just isn’t quite the thing in question, surely, as per Wikipedia, letter hole would be better?
“A slot in a wall or door through which mail is delivered (through-door delivery)” Source, Wikipedia.
Anyway, I decided to collect the weekly Estate Agency themed leaflets that ended up on our door mat for a whole seven days to see the style of advertising and marketing techniques that are currently used and also to compare each. A total of five different companies posted leaflets, all varied styles, sizes, qualities and messages.
One was simply a photo-copied A4 sheet of paper and not neatly folded and pushed through which did not really grab my attention or evoke any desire from me to read it. I noted two younger people walking round posting these leaflets, most probably in my opinion, trainee / work experience and understandably, leaflet dropping would be a chore:
We have the usual fake penned messages, which for many now must not make them think ‘oh this is a personal message to me‘, usually saying similar to ‘buyers are looking for homes just like yours‘. Two of the leaflets had this kind of message on.
Estate Agent Networking carried out a poll on Twitter to get people’s feedback on leaflets for Estate / Letting Agents and the results showed that from 38 votes received, the majority vote, at 37%, said that do not use leaflet marketing with a overall majority total voting for a negative response at 71%.
The most eye-catching one from the leaflets was the James Bond themed one, catchy quote of ‘Special Agent – Licensed to Sell‘. The most direct and what I would say the most effective was the one with the to the point and targeted message, highlighting an image of a very local property that has recently sold which made me feel the agency in question was an actual local agent who are dealing with the immediate local property to us.
Out of five leaflets, personal opinion only of course, only one would have made me contact that agency with confidence, the agency was DMG (David Martin Group, Colchester).
Author: Christopher Walkey
Founder of Estate Agent Networking and an internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Twitter and LinkedIn.
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