How to plan your first EDDM mailing, step by step
1. Decide what the card has to make people do
Every Door Direct Mail lands in every mailbox on a route, including homes that have never heard of you. The card gets a few seconds of attention, so it needs one clear reason to act and one clear way to do it.
Write the offer before you think about design. A first visit discount, a free estimate or a seasonal special all work, as long as the card says exactly what to do next.
Give the mailing its own phone number or offer code if you can. It is the only reliable way to know later what the mailing brought in.
2. Choose your carrier routes
Routes are chosen on the USPS EDDM online tool. Search a ZIP code and the map shows each carrier route with its count of residential and business deliveries.
The filters are where the planning happens. You can narrow routes by age, household income and household size, so a senior living community and a children's dentist would end up mailing very different streets.
Most local businesses start with the routes closest to them. People rarely drive far for a haircut, a pizza or a plumber, so nearby routes tend to make sense first.
3. Turn households into a print quantity
Add up the residential deliveries on the routes you picked. That total is how many pieces you need, and it rarely lands exactly on one of our print runs.
We print in three buy one, get one tiers of 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 pieces. Say your routes hold 4,300 homes: the 5,000 run covers them, and the extra cards can go to a second wave or sit on your counter.
The EDDM cost calculator does this arithmetic for you and finds the cheapest mix of runs for any household count.
4. Pick a size USPS will accept
EDDM only carries flats, so the card must have a long side over 10.5″ or a short side over 6.125″. That rules out the common 4″ × 6″ and 5.5″ × 8.5″ cards.
The 6.5″ × 9″ postcard is the usual first choice. It qualifies, it has room for a photo and an offer, and 5,000 cost $579 to print.
Our guide to EDDM postcard sizes compares all five sizes we print, with the cost per piece of each.
5. Get the artwork and approve a proof
Send a print-ready file if you have one. If not, our designers build the postcard for $69, working from your logo, photos and offer.
Either way you receive a proof before anything prints. Read it slowly and check the phone number digit by digit, because a wrong number on 5,000 cards cannot be fixed after printing.
6. Printing and delivery to you
Your order prints at whichever of our six U.S. hubs is closest to you and travels to you by UPS Ground. The builder on each product page shows the delivered price for your ZIP before you order.
Ask for shrink-wrapping in bundles of 100 if you want the cards arriving ready to count, from $30 per run. It saves an evening of stacking at the kitchen table.
7. Bundle the mail and drop it off
For EDDM Retail you do not need a mailing permit. You do need to bundle the pieces in stacks of 50 to 100, each with a USPS facing slip printed from the EDDM tool.
Take the bundles to the post office that serves your routes and pay the postage at the counter. Each post office accepts up to 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day, so a bigger mailing may need more than one trip.
Postage is charged by USPS, separate from our printing price. Check the current EDDM Retail rate when you plan, since USPS changes it from time to time.
Timing the drop
Work backwards from the date your offer matters. If a spring cleanup special starts on the first of April, the cards should be in mailboxes a week or so before that, while people are still making plans.
Leave room for the steps before the drop as well. Design, proof approval, printing and UPS delivery all come before you can bundle anything, so call 512-573-1977 with your target date and we will tell you when to place the order.
8. Count what comes back
Watch the calls and orders tied to the mailing's own number or code for a few weeks. That gives you a real response figure for your business, which is worth more than any industry average.
Then run the numbers through the break-even calculator. It shows how many customers the mailing needed to pay for itself, which tells you whether to mail the same routes again.
Quick answers
Do I need a permit to send EDDM?
Not for EDDM Retail. You bundle the pieces with facing slips, take them to the post office that serves your routes and pay postage at the counter.
How many homes should a first EDDM mailing reach?
Match the print runs to the routes you most want. Many first mailings use one 2,500 or 5,000 run on the routes nearest the business.
Can someone help me plan the routes and size?
Yes. Call 512-573-1977 and Corey will help with the size, the quantity and the timing on one call.
