Did you know that the United States Postal Service (USPS) offers a tool to help you directly reach residents in your community even if you don’t have specific mailing addresses? Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is a service that allows businesses to target residents of a designated geographical area to alert them of the business’s services and special offers.
What is Every Door Direct Mail?
We’ve all received Every Door Direct Mail, even if we didn’t know what it was called. Think about the flyer for the new takeout restaurant you received, or the flyer for a tree service that services your neighborhood. This is EDDM — and you can make it work for your business too!
EDDM is a service from the USPS that targets residents (and other businesses!) within a physical area that you choose. Once you’ve selected the residents to focus on, you’ll create a piece of collateral to be distributed to addresses within that area. This should be a small postcard or flyer with your key business information and an offer or invitation of some sort.
Who Should Use EDDM?
Every Door Direct Mail is most useful if your organization has a physical location or offers services in a well-defined geographic area. For example, a local nonprofit movie theater may be looking to expand past their current mailing list to draw in families during summer vacation. They could produce a flyer to promote an upcoming summer movie schedule and use EDDM to reach every resident within ten miles of the theater’s location. This has the benefit of getting the movie schedule in front of locals who may not have even known there was a local theater nearby!
How Does EDDM Work?
The first step is to determine what you would like to promote through your flyer, postcard, or brochure. It’s best to promote a specific service or event. By using your mailing this way you’ll give your audience information about your organization as well as something to respond to. Including a call to action, such as “Call now!” or “Join us!” can also increase engagement with your mailing. If you need support in creating an effective message and the overall mailing, Redstart Creative can help.
After you’ve created your mailing, the next step is to create a business account through USPS if you don’t already have one. You can fill out this form online to get started.
Now it’s time to select your audience! There are many options on how to select who will receive your mailing. Using the EDDM online tool, you can choose a neighborhood or route and then narrow or expand your results by filtering residents by age, household size, or household income based on the latest census information. You can even decide if you’re going to target only residential addresses or if you’d also like to include businesses!
Once you’ve printed your mailing and chosen your audience, you’ll drop off your mailings at your local postal office and they take care of the rest! As of April 2023 the cost to use EDDM can be as low as $.02 per piece. If you choose to mail over 5,000 pieces, USPS will work with you to create a Business Customer Gateway Account, giving you access to tools that will make it easier to manage these large mailing.
What Should Be Included In Every Door Direct Mail Pieces
- Your logo and business contact information
- A promotion linked with a code (10% off or a free gift for example) —the code will help you track the effectiveness of the mailing — or details about an upcoming event
- A call to action
With Every Door Direct Mail you’ll be able to reach an audience beyond your current mailing list! To make the most of EDDM, contact Redstart Creative today to create a custom message and mailing!
