What makes a leaflet get read instead of binned
What makes a leaflet get read instead of binned
What makes a leaflet work on the doormat: the three second glance, what goes front and back, and the print details that stop it being binned.
Most leaflets don't work. Not because print is dead, but because the leaflet was designed by someone who'd never watched one land on a doormat.
Here's what actually changes the outcome.
You have about two seconds
That's the window between someone picking it up off the mat and deciding. Not reading. Deciding. Everything hinges on what's visible in that glance.
Which means the top third of the front does all the work. If your business name is the biggest thing on it, you've spent your two seconds telling someone what you're called, which they didn't ask.
Tell them what you do and where you do it. "Roofing repairs across Newcastle" beats a large logo every single time.
Both sides have different jobs
The front stops them. The back convinces them.
Fronts fail when they try to say everything. A headline, one image that shows the actual work, and nothing competing with either. That's it.
The back is where detail belongs: what you do, why you, how to get hold of you. A services grid works well here because people scan rather than read: they're looking for the one thing they need, and a grid lets them find it without reading the others.
Make it stupidly easy to act
The most common failure I see is a leaflet that does everything right and then hides the phone number in 7pt grey at the bottom.
Your contact details should be findable from across the room. A QR code earns its place here. Someone standing in their hallway with a phone in one hand will scan far more readily than they'll type a URL.
And give them a reason to act now. Not a fake deadline, just something concrete: free quotes, no call-out charge, whatever's true.
The physical stuff that matters
Size. A5 is the sweet spot for door drops: big enough to read, small enough not to feel like junk mail.
Weight. Thin paper feels like a flyer for a takeaway. Something with a bit of substance gets held for longer, and held is the whole game.
Double-sided. Single-sided leaflets waste half the cost of the print run.
Finish. Matt is easier to read in hallway light. Gloss photographs better but throws glare.
Design it for where it'll be
This is the thing screen designers get wrong. A leaflet is read at arm's length, often in bad light, often by someone over fifty holding it at a slight angle.
So: real contrast, not tasteful grey on white. Type you can read without leaning in. And check it printed, not on a monitor. Colours shift, and 8pt looks fine on a retina screen and disappears on paper.
One that worked
A roofing company in Gosforth needed door drops that got past the bin. We went double-sided A5: the front carrying a headline and one image of actual finished work, the back a clean services grid with contact details and a QR code straight through to the quote form.
Nothing clever. It worked because every element had one job and nothing was fighting anything else.
Before you print a thousand
Print one. Put it on your own doormat. Walk past it the way you'd walk past someone else's junk mail.
If it doesn't stop you, it won't stop them, and you've saved yourself 999 copies of a mistake.
See the print work, or get a quote. Print design starts at £100.