EDDM explained: mail a whole neighborhood

What EDDM is

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is a USPS program that delivers your mailer to every address on the postal carrier routes you choose — no names or addresses needed. You pick the neighborhoods (by carrier route), and your postcard lands in every mailbox on them.

Why businesses use it

• No mailing list

  Skip buying or building a list — great for reaching a local area broadly.

• Low cost per piece

  EDDM postage is cheaper than standard first-class, so it stretches a local budget.

• Hyper-local

  Perfect for grand openings, restaurant promos, real-estate farming, and service-area businesses.

EDDM vs. a targeted list

Use EDDM when you want everyone in an area to see you. Use a targeted mailing list when you are reaching specific customers or a niche audience. We can do either — and help you choose.

We handle the whole thing

From design to the post office: we design the postcard, print it on EDDM-eligible stock, help pick your carrier routes, and handle the paperwork and drop-off through our mailing services. Ask us for a quote on your neighborhood.

EDDM size, stock, and formatting rules

EDDM has stricter format rules than regular mail. To qualify, your piece has to be a USPS flat: taller than 6.125 inches or longer than 10.5 inches, up to a maximum of 12 x 15 inches. That is why the classic little 4 x 6 postcard does not qualify - most EDDM pieces run 6.5 x 9, 6.5 x 12, or a full 8.5 x 11.

Every piece also needs the EDDM Retail indicia printed in the postage corner and an address line that reads Local Postal Customer - no names, no addresses. Because carriers handle these pieces loose, a sturdy cardstock (commonly 14 pt or heavier) survives the trip better than thin paper and feels more substantial when it lands in the mailbox next to everything else.

Not sure whether the size you have in mind qualifies? Run the dimensions through our free mailer size checker before you design anything. Fixing a non-compliant size after the artwork is finished usually means reworking the whole layout, so it pays to confirm up front.

How to plan an EDDM campaign step by step

Start with the goal and the offer, not the postcard. Decide what you want a household to actually do - call, visit, redeem a coupon, book an estimate - and give them one clear reason to do it now. A deadline or a strong first-visit offer almost always outperforms a generic announcement that your business exists.

Next, pick your carrier routes using the free USPS EDDM mapping tool. You can filter routes by residential count, average household income, and age ranges, then see exactly how many mailboxes each route contains. Skip routes that are mostly businesses unless businesses are your customer - and remember that route counts, not ZIP codes, determine your final quantity.

Then work backward to quantity and budget. Add up the addresses on your chosen routes, round up a little for spoilage, and get print pricing at that quantity. Keep in mind that EDDM Retail caps at 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day, so larger campaigns get split across multiple drop dates or post offices.

Finally, the paperwork: pieces are bundled in stacks with facing slips and delivered to the post office that serves each route. None of it is hard, but all of it is fussy - which is exactly why most of our customers hand the whole thing to us and never touch a bundle or a form.

Common EDDM mistakes we see

The biggest one: mailing once and calling it a test. A single drop can work for a time-limited event, but service businesses usually see response climb on the second and third mailing to the same routes, once the name starts to feel familiar. If the budget only covers one giant blast, consider mailing half the area twice instead.

Second: no trackable offer. If the card has no coupon code, dedicated phone line, or landing page, you will never really know whether it worked. Even a simple mention-this-card line at checkout gives you a rough read on response and tells you whether the routes are worth repeating.

Third: formatting problems that stall the mailing at the post office - wrong indicia, a missing Local Postal Customer line, or a piece that does not meet flat dimensions. These are easy to avoid when the file is set up correctly from the start, and they are exactly the details we check on every EDDM job we design.

What an EDDM campaign typically costs

EDDM Retail postage runs roughly 20 to 25 cents per piece as of this writing - always check current USPS rates, since they adjust periodically. Printing typically adds somewhere in the range of 10 to 30 cents per piece depending on size, stock, and quantity, with larger runs costing less per piece.

As a worked example, a 5,000-piece mailing of 6.5 x 9 postcards often lands somewhere in the $1,500 to $2,750 ballpark all-in - postage, printing, and prep - though your routes, piece size, and design needs will move that number. Play with your own quantities in our EDDM cost calculator to get a feel for it.

For a firm number on your actual neighborhoods, request a quote - tell us the ZIP codes you care about and we will map the routes, count the mailboxes, and price the whole campaign for you, design included.