Best Uses for Every Door Direct Mail

At Infinity Direct, we’ve been praising and promoting the USPS Every Door Direct Mail program for years. If you’ve never heard of EDDM or need a refresher, here is the quick summary. EDDM is a direct mail marketing offering by the USPS that allows marketers to reach an audience without knowing any personal information. Direct mailers can choose mailing routes based on geography and deliver mail to every mailbox in the designated area. With low postage rates, EDDM is arguably the most cost-effective way to distribute a message to a large number of targets at a lower cost than traditional direct mail targeted to individual names and/or addresses.

Every Door Direct Mail is great for businesses that don’t have a large or dependable database of current customers or the resources to purchase or rent lists from a data broker. If you can identify an area that can benefit from your product or service, regardless of age, gender or income, then EDDM can serve as an excellent way to promote sales or grand openings, distribute menus and other messages that benefit from having a large quantity of impressions.

If you have specific demographic targets or you have a quality list of prospects and/or customers, EDDM is probably not the best solution for your direct mail campaign. Additionally, if you want to target businesses (B2B), Every Door Direct Mail is not recommended. With EDDM you have the option to mail households only, or households and businesses, but you do not have the option to mail businesses only.

EDDM requires your direct mail piece meet certain size requirements to qualify. It must be taller than 6.125″ or longer than 11.5″ and smaller than 12″ long by 15″ high. It must be rectangular with square corners. There are other certain mail requirements, which are outlined by the USPS, that your piece will need to adhere to. Like any direct mail design, clear messaging, visually appealing creative design and a strong call to action are critical in attracting the most response to your EDDM campaign.

EDDM can provide a large geographic area to advertise to a broad audience at a low cost. However, if your message is timely or needs to be in mailboxes in a range of dates, EDDM may not be the best choice for your direct mail marketing effort. USPS can take up to 14 days for delivery of EDDM. If your offer includes an expiration date, you will need to account for the potential lag time from when your pieces enter the mail stream to delivery.

Small businesses, retailers, realtors or political campaigns can send anywhere from 200–5,000 pieces per day per ZIP code with EDDM Retail Features. You can choose to have a mail shop process and mail your campaign, or you can drop off the pieces at the Post Office. If you are a large-volume mailer, there is no limit on the number of pieces in the mailing or ZIP codes selected when using your Business Gateway account and a bulk mailing permit to enter the mail.

EDDM continues to be a very cost-effective, and perhaps underutilized, way to distribute a message to a large number of targets at a low cost. There are some disadvantages when compared to traditional direct mail, but for the proper business and marketing goal, EDDM can drive responses while being budget conscious.