Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM)

3 MIN READ
Level: medium

Ideal for business owners and marketing campaigns, Every Door Direct Mail® (EDDM) helps you get your message to your neighbors and local community.

Whether you have an upcoming sale or new products and events to promote, Every Door Direct Mail streamlines the process and helps you stick to your budget.

Using EDDM with Smartpress can be a smart business strategy, as you design product catalogs, service door hangers or advertising postcards for online printing.

What is Every Door Direct Mail

An Every Door Direct Mail carrier route marked on a map.

Every Door Direct Mail is a type of mailing where all the addresses in a carrier route are delivered a piece of your mail. With this convenient online printing service, you don’t need to know the name of the recipient or even the address, just the carrier route.

The pros and cons are simple:

Pros

All the savings:

Cons

  • Your custom direct mail gets delivered to a geographic location, not targeted individuals.
  • Pieces are sent to recipients who may or may not be in a demographic relevant to your business market.

How to Use it

With EDDM, you can mail your pieces two different ways: for business or retail.

When mailing EDDM Business with Smartpress, we take care of the setup and deliver your print pieces to the post office for you. If you choose EDDM Retail, you must set up your mailing through the USPS website.

Once there, you’ll find an EDDM tool that walks you through each step of the process and updates postage in real time. You’ll also find additional resources to ensure the mailing process is as smooth as possible.

Be prepared:

  • Know the carrier routes to which you’d like your mail to be delivered.
  • Know whether you’d like your pieces to be delivered to residential addresses only, residences and businesses or just P.O. boxes.

As a full-service online printer, Smartpress offers two EDDM options. Check out which one is right for your mailing:

Every Door Direct Mail – Bundling

  • Use this option for EDDM Retail mailings.
  • Smartpress prints your pieces and ships them to you.
  • You bring your piece to your post office.
  • This option ensures Smartpress prepares your mail in bundles of 50 or 100 pieces, as required for EDDM Retail.
  • You pay the postage when you bring your pieces to the post office or online when you set up the mailing.

Every Door Direct Mail – Full Service Handling

  • Use this option when Smartpress mails for you with our Bulk Mailing Permit.
  • This option ensures Smartpress prepares your list and mail sort according to USPS specifications.
  • Smarptress also bundles and delivers your piece to the post office.
  • You pay postage through Smartpress.

Postage

One of the main benefits of using EDDM is lower postage. It breaks down like this:

  • $0.203 per piece for retail pieces
  • $0.305 when Smartpress does the mailing for you with our Bulk Mailing Permit (up to 3.3 oz per piece)

Every Door Direct Business

  • Smartpress pays the postage through our Bulk Mailing Permit.
  • You then pay the postage through Smartpress (we’ll charge the card you used when placing your order).

Every Door Direct Retail

  • You pay the postage when you bring your order to your post office or online when you set up your mailing through the USPS website.

Tips & Tricks

  • Check out this quick reference guide for specifications on what size and type of mailings comply with EDDM standards.
  • When Smartpress mails your pieces for you with your own permit, we can get lower rates on postage for mailings that would not otherwise qualify for EDDM.
  • When mailing through Smartpress, we recommend you choose the EDDM Business option.
    • You don’t have to pay for us to ship the pieces to you.
    • You don’t have to set up your mailing with EDDM or deliver to the post office.

If you have any questions about direct mail or any of our other direct mail products, please contact customer service and chat with one of our print experts.