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The doorhanging quandry

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PizzaCity

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I know that doorhanging is the best marketing out there…we’ve done thousands and it’s really effective. I do have a couple challenges that I’m hoping someone could help me with:
  1. The weather has turned and it’s pretty nasty - do you continue doorhanging in 40 or below degree weather? How do we continue 400 a day if it’s raining or snowing?
  2. Most of my employees have other jobs. I only have 2 daytimers and one’s the driver the other’s the inside supervisor. How do you find staff to doorhang? (We’ve been doing the majority ourselves - I’ve lost 12 pounds but jeez, I need some help).
  3. I saw a posting here that someone has employees each do 6-8 hours per week! I try to require doorhanging, I either find the doorhangers not done (I drive thru neighborhoods to check), or the employee flatly refuses. That’s how I end up doing it myself. I checked with a temporary service but it would run $12 per hour per employee. How do you get it done?
  4. There are tons of potential customers that live directly on busy roads and can’t safely be doorhung. Is postcard mailings an OK alternative. I’ve found a way to mail for 12.7¢ postage so I can keep the cost down.
  5. How do you get to “restricted” areas - either gated communities, residential house on military base, or other limited areas like complexes that don’t allow flyering/doorhanging?
 
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  1. How on earth do you do 400 a day normally? That sounds like alot to do every single day. I’d say on days that are 40 below you give yourself and others a break… that’s just cruel.
  2. Post a help wanted ad at your local high school or in your local flyer paper asking for short term flyer deliverers.
  3. What time of the day are you checking? Is it after the hanging has been done… because that could mean that the people came home and brought them inside. Or that the employee put them in the mailbox instead. If you schedule the employees to work a flyering shift, I can’t imagine how they could refuse. You are paying them right? If you aren’t, I wouldn’t blame them for not wanting to do free work.
Ask about delivery from the place you are getting them printed. I work at a large branded company and we get the company that prints them to distribute them as well. However, we aren’t doing them at 400 a day everyday. (That still is boggling my mind.)

3 & 4 -Postcard mailing is a good alternative and will get you into the gated communities.
 
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The last couple of days have been horrible weather wise. It’s tough doorhanging in cold, icy, snowy weather. But our philosphy is that we will ALWAYS doorhang. The only weather that stop us is heavy rain. When it’s bad like today we make sure to take breaks in the car to warm up. Everyone takes it a little slower to make sure we don’t have any slip/fall accidents.
When we go out we do designated areas. We don’t stop until the area is covered. During good weather we can get most areas done in two hours. But like today it took us almost three. It just has to get done. If we don’t our business suffers.

We haven’t had to take any drastic measures to find hangers. We have a sign up front letting people know we’re looking. Usually, if you can get a high school kid in the door he’ll have some friends that will follow.

You can’t ‘try to require doorhanging’, it has to be mandatory. Your crew must know that they will ALL benefit from the sales that come from it. When we hang there is always a supervisor with them. Usually they are the ones driving. Sending hangers out alone unsupervised is a bad idea. You wouldn’t leave them in your store unsupervised.

I make it very clear to all new hires that they will be expected to door hang. We try and make it fun, have competitions between ‘teams’ and when we get an order from where we just doorhung we go nuts. We scream and bang stuff(as long as no customers are in the lobby). I know it sounds silly but it builds excitement.
 
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I employ a technique we developed back in the day at old Dominos Pizza, called drive for five, it was a compromise because we found that our managers, and team members were over-taxed as it was, and with the high turnover that we had back then we didn’t wan’t to give them anymore reason to leave.

Drive for Five, works like this. Everytime your driver makes a delivery, before getting back in his car he/she need to take 5 doorhangers, and doorhang 5 houses around that delivery. Both houses on the left and right of the delivery, and the three across the street.

This also works in those secured apartment buildings, and military bases. If you driver is lucky enough to get into these secured buildings, he might as well take an extra 5 minutes to doorhang the whole building, I know that I can hang a 3-story, 50 apartment building in less than 5-minutes. These efforts need to be driven by someone, I usually had a list of the secured buildings and there addresses on the cut-table, and when I saw one of those addresses cross in front of me, I alerted the driver delivering of the necessity to doorhang the whole building, and I would facilitate him by handing him a stack of doorhangers, I might throw in a bonus, like a $1.00 for every additional delivery that comes out of that building over the next two days. If the usual immediate response rate on Doorhangers is 5% to 10% then you will hand him $2 to $5. for his efforts, and you will gain some new customers.
 
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That’s all really good stuff!!

I like the doorhanging while on deliveries. I guess for bad weather, we’ll keep up the doorhanging, just maybe reduce what the goals are. BTW, we don’t require doorhanging, but we do pay $2 extra per hour over the employee’s standard rate for doorhanging time.

Thanks!
 
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No one I know of here in Australia does doorhanging. We do letterbax drops of menus and special offers.

Could someone please email me a photo/image of one of your door hangers so I can see what they are like.
Send to [email protected]

Re doorhanging 5 houses around a delivery, this is similar to a store I was looking at purchasing. They did the house either side of the delivery witha mini menu on one side with their website address for the full menu and on the other side they had in big print… YOU ARE READING THIS BECAUSE YOUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR HAD ONE OF OUR GREAT PIZZAS DELIVERED LAST NIGHT.

I said I would do the same thing but as yet haven’t got around to it, but from tomorrow I will get some printed up and commence doing it. To get drivers driven to do it I will put a $1 per order received bonus for them. They will need to write their name on it. and customers will have a deal available on redemption so we can track the drivers effectiveness.

Dave
 
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PizzaCity:
  1. The weather has turned and it’s pretty nasty - do you continue doorhanging in 40 or below degree weather? How do we continue 400 a day if it’s raining or snowing?
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Well, In my market, if it is raining or snowing we call it liquid coupons. We are busy enough on those nights, so no need to door hang. Why would you want to possibly deliver a crumpled soggy flier that got wet in the rain or snow, or risk hypothermia for that matter.
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PizzaCity:
  1. Most of my employees have other jobs. I only have 2 daytimers and one’s the driver the other’s the inside supervisor. How do you find staff to doorhang? (We’ve been doing the majority ourselves - I’ve lost 12 pounds but jeez, I need some help).
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Team up with local teams. If there are any schools in your area, get the sports teams or clubs to hang for you. Give them a pizza party in exchange. 10 kids can get out 200 an hour. 2 hours each, and you can expect about a 2% return. That is 80 orders, more than enough to give those kids a real party, and everyone is a winner.
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PizzaCity:
  1. There are tons of potential customers that live directly on busy roads and can’t safely be doorhung. Is postcard mailings an OK alternative. I’ve found a way to mail for 12.7¢ postage so I can keep the cost down.
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Heck ya. Route mailing is a very effective way to get the message out. Just be sure you have a quality piece going out.
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PizzaCity:
  1. How do you get to “restricted” areas - either gated communities, residential house on military base, or other limited areas like complexes that don’t allow flyering/doorhanging?
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Be careful here. I had a trailer park ban all pizza delivery vehicles for door hanging the area. My drivers had to walk to the trailer from the front gate of the park. That is no fun in the winter.
 
I have never heard of banning delivery driver from an area…If you are delivering to a tenants home at their request I can not see how you can be banned…I am not totally up to speed on trespassing law but how can it be if you are invited…RCS…
 
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On the “banning”, it’s not so much the driver, it’s the restiction of doorhanging. We have a big untapped market of military housing. We’re completely allowed to leave flyers in the barracks and to deliver food when ordered, but we cannot doorhang the residential housing area. There are several thousand military families we cannot get to directly. It took me forever to figure out the carrier route to do a saturation mailing targeting them. Thank goodness for melissadata!!
 
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I also can’t see how they can ban you when invited. We had a problem with an apartment complex stepping up their towing for parking illiegally. Usually the guest parking isn’t anywhere near where you are delivering, so you park right by the stairwell. You come down the stairs and your truck is being picked up by the tow truck. Not a good scenario.
 
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Pizza City…Here is a thought…Get the local school (or better yet a base based group) do do some sort of fund raising drive door to door…Make up a magnetic memo board (ad on front and menu on back) with some coupons attached (use a series of sticky notes)…They can sell them for a few $$s each…They keep the money and you get in the house…As long as the coupons have a good value they should be an easy sale…You might get kicked out but will they kick out the kids of the soldiers?..RCS…
 
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royster13:
I have never heard of banning delivery driver from an area…If you are delivering to a tenants home at their request I can not see how you can be banned…I am not totally up to speed on trespassing law but how can it be if you are invited…RCS…
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This is very easy. Trailer parks are on private property. There was a sign at the gate: “No Pizza Delivery Vehicles”. The owner/manager of the place would close the gate every time he saw a car topper, and keep it closed until the police arrived. Tresspassing.

This is not a typical place I assure you. I think it was some sort of combination of inbreeding and an over abundance of free time. Just like the guy who owns a 2001 Chevy truck who calls in to complain because someone touched his car when they put a flier under the wiper blade.

Those are just a few of the extreme experiences I have actually had though.
 
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