What Is the EDDM Program?

EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail. It is a program created by the United States Postal Service, which allows small businesses to advertise to specific residential areas without having to collect contact information from different households individually. It gives businesses a way to target local customers, simplifying the whole process so you can easily manage your direct mail marketing campaigns.

There are two types of EDDM account available for business owners, the EDDM-Retail Account and USPS Business Account. The EDDM-Retail Account allows for up to 5,000 pieces of mail per ZIP code, and no postage permit is required. The USPC Business Account is designed for those who have a larger volume of mail to deal with. It allows for mail to be managed online, offering the ability to have more than 5,000 pieces of mail per ZIP code per day too. However, it does require a postage permit, unlike the EDDM-Retail Account.

Easy Direct Mail Campaign Customization

Once you have chosen a USPS account for your direct mail, you can get started on tailoring your campaigns. It’s simple to start deciding where you want to send your mail and, of course, what you want to send out. The EDDM Mapping Tool is offered to make it possible for you to select your routes for dispatching your direct mail. You can choose from various filters to help you define your routes, including income, age or household size of the people that you send to.

Once that is taken care of, it’s up to you to design and print the mail that you want to send. Using a service such as Catdi Printing, it’s easy to customize your direct mail material with the right design and messaging. You should try to keep your printed materials relatively small and ensure your messaging is succinct. Make it clear and eye-catching, and be sure to have a good call to action that tells the receiver what they should do next. With an online order service, you can easily get your design printed and choose everything from the type of paper to how quickly you want it printed. You can use your own design, or if you’re using a service like ours, you can design your material as you place your order fairly easily.

Quick Steps for Arranging Delivery

The next step is to arrange to have your mail delivered. You need to choose a drop-off date, taking into account the number of deliveries you’re going to buy and the destination for your direct mail. When you prepare your mail for delivery, you need to bundle them into stacks that are no more than six inches high. The recommendation is bundles of between 50 and 100 pieces of mail.

There are some forms to fill out before you can dispatch your mail. You need to fill out facing slips and EDDM forms, providing the postal service with the information that they need to deliver your mail. Every bundle needs a facing slip, which will include how many pieces there are in the bundle. The slip also gives you somewhere to indicate any addresses of customers who no longer wish to receive mail from you.

When you’re ready to pay for your postage, you can do it online or at the Post Office. Take your mail to the Post Office on the date you have arranged for delivery, and it will be distributed.

This super easy process is one of the great reasons you should be using EDDM. It makes direct mail marketing so much more simple so that any small business is capable of doing it. Starting a new campaign can be done in just a few steps, and it doesn’t take long to understand the process.

The EDDM Program Is Ideal for B2C Businesses

Every Door Direct Mail is the perfect option for businesses that want to send their direct mail to residences. The program offers the option of mailing to either residences on a carrier route or both residences and businesses along a route. This means that if you want to send direct mail to either just consumers or to both consumers and businesses, it’s a solution that can work for your business. Unfortunately, you can’t use EDDM to send mail to only businesses, which means it’s not really a suitable option for B2B businesses.

EDDM Saves You Money

Compared to some of the direct mailing options, Every Door Direct Mail could send you money. This is because EDDM is a more simplified way of sending direct mail. The lists of people you send your materials to are based on the carrier routes that you select. In contrast, some other direct mailing options will offer you direct mailing lists based on a broad range of characteristics, such as whether someone is a homeowner or a renter or even their purchasing habits. EDDM does allow you to tailor the routes that you choose based on income, household size, or age. If you don’t need to have very specifically tailored mailing lists, it’s an excellent option.

Direct Mail Is Still Useful

You may see the benefit of using the EDDM program, but is direct mail even still a good marketing method? One of the reasons EDDM is so great is that it helps to keep direct mail relevant and modern. There might be many new methods of marketing, including various digital marketing techniques, but that doesn’t mean that the more traditional marketing methods are no longer important.

Direct mail can still have a real impact and help you to promote your business. When you send someone a piece of direct mail, it gives them a much longer exposure to your brand. If they’re online, they could easily scroll past an ad or watch the first five seconds of your video ad before skipping it. But they might spend a lot longer looking at a postcard, flyer or another type of print marketing. It could even end up being in their home for days or weeks, especially if it has an attractive offer on it. When you send direct mail, it puts your message right in front of people, and it’s not so easy for them to ignore. Being able to get their attention is vital, and giving them something they can not just see but also hold in their hands is a great way to do it.

In fact, the EDDM program is one of the excellent ways that new technology and traditional marketing methods can be combined. You can use new technology to design and print your materials, and to arrange for them to be distributed. You can also use your print materials to direct consumers to your website, social media pages, app download, email address or even phone number. It can be the start of a relationship with your customers, encouraging them to get more involved with what you have to offer.

Direct mail campaigns and using the EDDM program can be helpful for many different types of business. If you run a restaurant or coffee shop, own a retail store, offer auto services, provide domestic services such as cleaning or landscaping, or have any other business that residents might be interested in, a direct mail campaign can work for you. It’s ideal for businesses working on local marketing, who want to ensure they encourage customers in their local area. However, if your business is online, it can still be a good way to reach people in many different locations.

Get Creative

When you use Every Door Direct Mail for your direct mailing, you can get creative with your marketing materials. You need to follow the guidelines for size, and you can only send direct mail but, apart from that, you can do what you want. You can design your print materials to work for any campaign that you want to carry out, and you can send your materials out in small or large numbers. It’s excellent if you want to send out special offers for your business, or let people know about a new opening, a rebranding, a new product or any other news. Whatever you design your campaign for, you can create printed materials that help you achieve your goals. Use a design that works for your brand, clear messaging and strong calls to action to get people to make the next move.

You firstly have flexibility in the size that you can choose for your mail-outs. The minimum size is 11.5″ long, or 6.125″ high, or 0.25″ thick. This gives you a lot of options if you’re considering a small size. However, you can also go bigger, which can give you the capability of creating more eye-catching designs. The maximum size is 15″ long, 12″ high, or 0.75″ thick. This gives you further options to customize your mail and choose something compact or something a little larger. The weight limit is 3.3oz per piece of mail, so you can choose good quality paper for your mail-outs too.

Just like when you design marketing materials for online use, you have plenty of things you can do to make your direct mail stand out. As well as choosing the right colors, graphics and text styles, you can also consider special effects on your materials. High gloss paper, different colors and shapes, embossing, and foil stamping are some of the options that you might consider. You can add photos, illustrations or other graphics to your designs to create the messaging and branding that you want to deliver.

Track Your Campaign’s Performance

Using EDDM to dispatch direct mail, you can still keep track of how your campaign is getting results. While you can get much more data from an online campaign, it doesn’t mean you can’t track your direct mail campaign. You can use a number of methods to make it easier to understand how your campaign is doing and translating into sales. With some materials, it may be very simple. If you send out coupons can be used in your store, you will know when someone uses one with their purchase. However, if you’re asking people to go online or call you, it can take a bit more precision.

Some of the ways you can track your campaign performance include asking customers to quote an offer code, having specific URLs for them to visit, or phone numbers that you use just for your direct mail. You could also use QR codes if you want to give people something to scan on their phones.

When you make the most of Every Door Direct Mail, you can benefit from effective and affordable marketing. It’s a great option for small businesses who want to create direct mail campaigns.

The Benefits of EDDM: A Summary

Every Door Direct Mail gives you an excellent range of benefits for your small business marketing. Let’s run through them one last time:

• Affordability – offers great cost-effectiveness compared to other direct mail options
• No need to deal with mailing lists – the simple process removes the need for handling mailing lists
• Flexible sizing – the flexible sizing options allow you to design print marketing materials that work for your brand
• No postage permit required for up to 5,000 pieces of mail per ZIP code per day

The EDDM program is an amazing service for small businesses. If you’re not already using it, you should start now.