The end of paper flyers?

[Frank Cox]

We have two fair-sized grocery stores in town and they both send out a weekly paper flyer in the mail.

I was just at one of those stores and they have a notice up stating that the paper flyer has been discontinued, please read the flyer online or through their app.

Since I know that flyers are really expensive to print and mail out (prior to 2011 I sent out monthly flyers for my theatre and spent over $1000 per month for postage alone) I can't blame anyone for wanting to stop sending them out.

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end of paper flyers. The other grocery store hasn't said anything about no more flyers yet so I guess they'll still be sending theirs.

It'll be a bit inconvenient for me since, in addition to my wife checking the flyers when she's making up a shopping list, I use last weeks flyers to line my bird's cage.

Do you folks still get flyers or has everything moved online? Maybe an actual flyer is just a small town thing now.

[Carsten Kurz]

We print flyers, but we don't send them out through mail.

[Jim Cassedy]

We print flyers, but we don't send them out through mail.

Many local theaters here do the same thing. They have printed flyers that people
can pick up in their lobbies, and they're also available at nearby neighborhood
coffee shops, libraries and corner markets.

The two local grocery stores near me have weekly flyers available for pick-up in the
store and at several kiosks around the neighborhood, but I haven't seen one in the
mail for some time. During the big holidays major here, like Christmas, Thanksgiving,
4th Of July and Labor Day, the flyers are sometimes dropped off on doorsteps by
some company that pays to do that sort of distribution. 99% of my postal mail is
basically what I consider to be "junk mail", for credit card offers or carpet cleaning
services, etc that I don't need.
The worst of it comes during election season. A couple of years ago, during one
of the presidential elections, I started saving all the election flyers I got either in
the mail or shoved under my front door from Sept 1st until election day, roughly
a month later. The final count came to a total of over 260 pieces of political
propaganda both for and against various politicians and propositions. I dumped
all of it out onto my living room floor and took a picture of the pile, which is on
one of my old phones somewhere.

[Mike Blakesley]

We had monthly theatre calendars for many years, but when we started booking "Monday for Friday" we stopped using them so we could pivot easily when bookings would change.

At our parts store, we used to have a monthly sale flyer. About 6 months ago the company (Carquest) stopped printing those and replaced it with a monthly "Drive Guide." It's a small booklet that stays in the store and has all the same specials in it that the flyers used to have. We get five copies of the Drive Guide a month, as opposed to about 100 of the flyers. Hardly anyone was taking them, anyway -- they'd page through it and put it back on the rack.

We have a hardware store near here that still makes an insert for our weekly newspaper once in a while. I have never looked at it, it goes right into the trash, considering I buy hardware when I need it, not when it's on sale.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The local newspaper here in Tucson has LOTS of inserts on Wednesdays, many from grocery stores. The stuff I get in the mail tries to look like a government document in the hopes you will open it. I've received several that warn that the city will not repair the waterline on our side of the meter, others claiming our appliance insurance is about to expire, etc. Generally, it appears direct mail advertising borders on fraud.

On cinema, the Loft Cinema, here in Tucson, has flyers for special series, such as the Saturday Hollywood Classics. Another interesting thing they do is their local advertisers (still images that run before the trailers start) can have flyers in the lobby. Many of the advertisers include a QR code, but it's nice to just pick up a piece of paper on your way out if something caught your attention. What mostly catches my attention, though, is spelling errors in the ads. One ad has "montly" instead of "monthly." Another is looking for foster parents who can be "single or married couples." I'm not sure what a single couple is (unmarried couple?).

Back on cinema, I think mailed flyers can easily be replaced by a weekly email newsletter that people choose to subscribe to. It can have links to your web site (a real one, not a Facebook page) that has more information about the movie and a link to the trailer.

[Frank Cox]

I buy hardware when I need it, not when it's on sale.

I get still flyers from two hardware stores in town. If I'm thinking about buying something I'll start looking at it and buy that thing when it's on sale, as long as I don't need it right away. Stuff like spare light bulbs which isn't something that I need immediately since I always keep a few on the shelf but when they're on sale I'll buy a half-dozen and restock that shelf.

a weekly email newsletter that people choose to subscribe to.

I have that and far more people get the weekly email than ever actually come to the show. I don't know why some of those folks bother, but there's nothing lost by having them on the list if they want the email.

I used to have an ad in my friend's classified ad paper too but he shut 'er down a month or so ago so that's gone.

I advertised in the local weekly newspaper when I first opened the theatre but stopped after they screwed up my ad and put "now playing Spider-man" a week before I was actually playing it. Since that was a big movie at the time I saw that and thought, damn, I'll be turning people away all week and they'll be mad at me. But nobody (zero) people came to see Spider-man that week, so that clued me in that nobody read that ad in the paper and I never did another one.

It used to be a monthly flyer but now it's just my webpage and the email mailing list.

[Ryan Gallagher]

It's annoyingly non-simple (for both you and the reader) and perhaps expensive to implement if you don't have a system already. But these days I feel like print ads need some kind of campaign QR code "hook" to track engagement, if no one is going to the link under the QR code then the ad is doing nothing but costing money.

It could be like a "scan for showtimes" link. Or scan for discounted concessions coupon, yada yada.

[Scott Jentsch]

Our regional grocery store chain (now part of Krogers) dropped their mail inserts several years ago, right after they introduced their website and rewards program (might have been when they got swallowed by Kroger). Someone probably convinced them that print and mailers were dead, and got them to shift their marketing budget to the website and rewards program. They still had a paper flyer available in-store, and you could view that flyer online.

A few years later, they're back to mailing their flyers again.

What I really don't get is why they offer online coupons that have to be "clipped" which adds them to our rewards account, which we then have to give at the checkout. It's probably a behavioral science thing, but it's silly to make me page through dozens of online coupons and click each one for the stuff I'm buying. I don't buy stuff I don't normally buy just because there's a coupon for 50 cents off when I buy three of something I haven't bought before, but jumping through their hoops saves me money, so I do it anyway.

As far as QR codes to gauge response, that can be one measure, but there has to be a reason for them to click, or they're not going to. Smart people hesitate to click on QR codes for no good reason, but if it's on an ad for a place they recognize (local theater, grocery store, etc.), that friction probably goes away. But there still has to be a reason to click it. Free popcorn? Buy one get one free hot dogs? Something. Even lacking the action, the ad has impact from a visibility standpoint. It's just hard to measure the effectiveness of seeing an ad without those clicks/actions.

I like the idea of the weekly newsletter. Even if you don't get direct response from it, the newsletter gets in front of them and makes them think about your theater, and that's not a bad thing. The more interesting and relevant the newsletter content, the better.

For those that do newsletters, do you run specials or how do you judge their effectiveness? How would you rate that against doing social media?

[Frank Cox]

Interestingly enough, even though I saw that notice at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago I still get their flyer in the mail.

I wonder if they got enough pushback that they changed their mind about discontinuing the flyer.

As for the effectiveness of my weekly email, all I can say is that I have a lot of "subscribers" and I guess they must like getting it because they continue to do so.

When I used to send out flyers in the mail I had people who just came in to the theatre to pick up a flyerl. I also occasionally got complaints from people saying that they didn't get the flyer in the mail and why didn't they get one. I would ask if they had posted their mailbox for "no junk mail" and when they said yes I told them that's the reason.

Many many times I got a blank look after that, and a "But the theatre flyer isn't junk mail!"