Direct Mail answers for PR & Marketing Professionals, Nonprofits, and Small Businesses

Direct Mail Versus Email Marketing: Who Wins the Battle?

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Questioning the effectiveness of direct mail? The truth is that in our technology-obsessed world, direct mail marketing still delivers impressive results.

According to an Adage article, the Direct Marketing Association reports that, “direct mail is 10 to 30 times more effective than email.”  

In fact, direct mail response rates have been relatively stable since 2010. Additionally, when comparing response rates in the same study, 34 out of 1,000 customers responded to direct mail marketing while just 1 out of 1,000 customers responded to email.

A Huffington Post article using data compiled by Epsilon found similar results. This study finds that consumers “prefer direct mail over email about brands or products in almost every category, including financial services (36 percent to 8 percent), insurance (36 percent to 9 percent) and travel (21 percent to 13 percent).” The same study indicates that 50 percent of U.S. consumers prefer direct mail to email.

So if we’ve piqued your interest in direct mail marketing, here are some suggestions on where to start.

Market to your own customer list: According to Marketing Sherpa it costs 5-7 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to sell more to an existing customer.  Your list of existing customers is a veritable gold mine.

If you’re concerned that your customer list is not up-to-date, please contact us. Take advantage of the sophisticated mailing software that we have which automatically searches the USPS national change-of-address database and tells you not only who’s moved, but it also provides their new address.

Find new prospects with Every Door Direct Mail. Have you heard of Every Door Direct Mail? You can send snail mail marketing that’s targeted by neighborhood for postage of just 16 cents apiece. You don’t even need to purchase a database when you use Every Door Direct Mail. Contact us to get a free count for the areas that you want to target.

If you’ve dismissed direct mail as old-fashioned or ineffective, it’s time to reconsider. Not only does direct mail generate substantially higher response rates, but customers across a broad range of industries prefer it to email marketing.

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How Will the January 2013 USPS Postage Hike Impact You?

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An overall 2.57% United States Postal Service rate postage rate increase is scheduled to take effect on January 27th, 2013.

The interesting thing about postage rate increases is that they are typically not distributed equally across all classes of mail. As a result trying to determine exactly how the increase will impact you can be quite confusing.

The purpose of this short article is to break down how the rate increase impacts the different classes of postage. As a bulk mail professional, I'm most interested in the impact on letter-sized pieces and Every Door Direct Mail.

Each year, the USPS is allowed to raise rates. As long as the proposed rate increase falls within the rate of inflation, there's no need for approval from the US Congress or any other entity.

Every Door Direct Mail: The rate increase for Every Door Direct Mail is over 10%! Wow! Postage for Every Door Direct Mail retail has increased from 14.5 cents to 16 cents apiece. This is shocking to me. When the program was first introduced postage was just 14.2 cents apiece and then increased to a modest 14.5 cents. I'm concerned that the USPS might be pricing itself out of the market with this its fastest growing program, and I'm frankly very disappointed with this decision.

First Class Letter-sized Mail: Rate changes to first-class mail always seem to get the most attention because at some point or another, everyone has to purchase a stamp and mail a letter. Here’s the impact:

• Postage for letters that weigh 1 ounce or less will increase 1-cent to 46 cents.
• It will also cost you an extra penny to mail a postcard; the rate increases from 32 cents to 33 cents.

If you want to avoid having to think about the postage increase for individual mail pieces, it's probably a smart idea to stock up on forever stamps. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as forever stamps for bulk mail.

First Class Presort Letter-sized Mail: First of all, there's a lot of confusion about first class presort mail. It's a discounted form of first class mail; even though it's a type of bulk mail, the mail receives first class treatment.

To take advantage of first-class presort, you need to have a minimum of 500 pieces of mail. For letter-sized mail pieces, the postage is typically 10 cents less per piece. As far as the rate increase goes, rates for letter-sized first class mail pieces will increase on average about 1 cent apiece (between 2.7-2.9%).

International Mail: Current postage for first class letters sent to Canada or Mexico is 85¢ apiece, and mail to all other foreign destinations is $1.05 apiece. The increase will result in a consistent rate of $1.10 apiece for all first-class international letter-sized mail, so folks mailing to Canada or Mexico are the biggest losers.

Presort Standard Letter-sized Mail: This is the most common class of "bulk" mail. Unless you're a nonprofit, you probably mail your marketing materials at this rate.

Postage for letter-sized pieces mailed using this class are increasing on average about half a cent apiece. From a percentage point-of-view this amounts to somewhere between 1.4% - 2.1%. Essentially this is a kinder price increase than what you'll experience with first-class presort.

Nonprofit Letter-sized Mail: Unfortunately, there's no good news for US-based nonprofit organizations who rely on bulk mail for their fundraising. On average, letter-sized nonprofit mail will increase about 3.25%. This is actually higher than the average increase and again a big disappointment, and most likely a representation of their collective lack of clout with the folks tasked with this decision.

Despite extreme growth with online marketing activities by nonprofit organizations, on average, direct mail marketing still accounts for the majority of funds raised. This will be an especially painful increase for charitable organizations.

Mailing Permits: The annual cost for a mailing permit is increasing from $190 to $200. People who outsource their mailings don’t have to worry about this.

In summary, it seems like the biggest losers with this rate increase are nonprofit fundraisers and small businesses who rely on Every Door Direct Mail to attract customers to their businesses. Clearly the USPS has a lot of challenges, but each time rates are raised, the USPS is incentivizing its most loyal customers to find alternate communication vehicles for their customers, prospects and donors.

If you have questions about which bulk mail options make the most sense for your organization, I hope that you'll please contact me for help.

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What You Need To Know About the New Every Door Direct Mail Website

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If you use or are planning to use Every Door Direct Mail for marketing, you need to read this.

The USPS recently made substantial changes to the Every Door Direct Mail website.

I process Every Door Direct Mail campaigns on a daily basis and struggled to output the correct paperwork as a result of these changes.

In fact, if you are a professional bulk mailer or have an active bulk mail permit with the USPS, the changes for you are the most complex, and you'll need to skip to the bottom of this post to view the only viable work-around that I've found for Every Door Direct Mail Retail for permit holders.

What's changed? Essentially the entire navigation of the site has changed when you log in. In the old system, when you logged in, you saw the image below.

While the new portal looks like this.

In the old system you first had to identify if you planned to do "EDDM Retail" or "EDDM BMEU." If you're not sure which applies to you, the vast majority of you reading this would normally select "EDDM Retail."

What's confusing about the new EDDM portal is that you're brought directly to a screen the forces you to start by selecting your geography first without selecting EDDM Retail/EDDM Retail. If you are a permit holder, the system defaults to "EDDM BMEU" and as the EDDM website is currently set up, it's impossible to change it to “EDDM Retail.”

Certain clients I work with want to exclude businesses and target residential addresses only. I struggled with how to do this on the new site until I noticed the "mailing options" button directly under and to the right of "Select Deliveries" title. By clicking "mailing options" you can specify if you want to send your mail to "Business & Residential" or "Residential Only."

To add to the confusion, selection of your target geography is completely different. In the previous system there were 4 distinct tabs at the top: By City, By County, By Zip Code, By Location. Directly below is a screen shot of the old version with the tabs across the top.

The new version has no tabs (and no instructions).You can still search by City, Zip code or by using a specific address, but as best I can tell, you can no longer search by county.

After you select your geography, the next step is to pick your expected delivery date to the USPS. I suppose if the actual date that you drop off your EDDM differs from the date that you entered on the EDDM website, you could just cross out the date and initial it; however, there's no guarantee that your post office will accept paperwork like this.

It then makes you select your company name from a dropdown. This is puzzling to me since at this point, you've got to be logged in and it already has your company information.

Before you can complete your transaction, you’ll need to be sure to check the legal disclaimer box that says “I understand and agree to the terms and conditions.”

At the EDDM Retail check out, you are given the option to "Pay At The Post Office" or "Pay Online."

If you opt to "Pay At The Post Office" you'll get a screen that looks like what you see directly below.

This screen contains links to the paperwork that you'll need to print and bring with you to the specified post office. It includes PS Form 3587-B which is your 2-page "Mailing Statement." Your Mailing Statement will be prepopulated with your CRID # and the name and address of your business info. This page also contains a link to a Facing Slip that you’ll need to copy and insert between every 100 mail pieces.

If you close out of your EDDM paperwork too quickly, don't worry because you also receive an email confirmation with a link to print the same forms if needed.

If instead you click on "Pay Online" you will be brought to the screen below.

You will have to prepopulate your credit card info in order for everything to work correctly. Your credit card will not be charged unless you click the blue "checkout" button. You can always click "clear shopping cart" if you want to cancel the entire transaction. I tested this, and it works fine.

If you have an active bulk mail permit then you need to continue reading. As the EDDM site is currently configured, you will be unable to process an EDDM retail campaign if there is a bulk mail permit tied to your CRID number. There is simply no option for "EDDM Retail" offered to you.

The two workarounds for you as a permit holder are: #1) Have your client sign up for their own CRID # and use their CRID # and information to process the EDDM Retail Campaign. This is problematic because you most likely won’t have their password and login information. #2) Sign up as a different business entity through the USPS Business Customer Gateway. If you have a DBA name, perhaps you can sign up for a second USPS ID using the name of your corporate entity or vice versa. This second ID will be uncoupled from your business permit and will enable to you process EDDM Retail mailings.

Here's a link to sign up at the USPS Business Customer Gateway or, if you’re completely new to Every Door Direct Mail, here’s a link to my tutorial for signing up the first time.

Searching for your target area: The map feature seems to be improved in this newer version. If you input a zip code or specific address and hover over the individual carrier routes, the map will highlight the location of the corresponding carrier route. The maps now list a few neighborhood names which helps from an orientation point of view, but it still appears as if the majority of neighborhoods are unlabeled on the USPS maps on the EDDM site.

As a bulk mail professional, and a proponent of Every Door Direct Mail, I'm certainly disappointed with the inability for permit holders to select EDDM Retail when logged in and I hope that this is eventually changed.

For anyone without a bulk mail permit, I suspect that once you get oriented with the new navigation, you’ll find that this new site is probably more convenient because of the improved map feature.

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Please contact me or include your comments below if you'd like to contribute to the conversation or point out anything that I may have overlooked.

Breaking News: Every Door Direct Mail Now Requires a Login

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If you use Every Door Direct Mail Retail for marketing, then you must read this.

Unfortunately, the United States Post Office now requires a login before you can print the required paperwork and before you can use their website to get a count of your prospect area.

Launched nearly a year ago, the spirit of EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) was to provide a simplified option for entrepreneurs and small businesses to leverage the power of direct mail marketing.

Overall EDDM has been a success for both small businesses and the USPS; however, this latest change represents a step backward. Instead of making EDDM easier, the USPS is making it more complex.

I was astounded at how complex it was to login to the new EDDM site the first time. In fact, the initial login involved navigation through seven different screens.

So that you don't have to suffer through the same frustration that I did, I decided to include screen shots of the mandatory screens with yellow oval highlights showing where to click to progress through the required steps successfully. Most screen shots are cut off on the right-hand side; simply click on any of the images in this post to see a full-size screen shot.

Click on this link to get to the main page. Then click on the EDDM Retail Button as displayed in the in the bottom left of the graphic below.

Next, you’ll need your e-mail address & password to LogIn and move forward. Enter this info in the top right and click the “SignIn” button. See below:

What if I forgot my password? You may have been using EDDM without a password for as long as ten months. As a previous EDDM customer, you would have been issued a Customer Registration ID (CRID) number. It's mandatory that your CRID number be placed on all EDDM postage statements.

Your "username" should be the e-mail address that was used when you first registered with the USPS and got your CRID number. Simply click on the "I forgot my password" link directly below the login prompt and enter your e-mail address to receive your new password.

On the next screen, you’re required to check a box in the bottom left hand corner and then click “Next” on the bottom right to proceed. Be careful, it's easy to overlook the check box.

Simply click the “Continue” button on the right-hand side of the screen.

Be careful, the next screen has a bunch of different menus, so it's very easy to get confused. Look for the 4th Heading down titled “Mailing Services” then select “Every Door Direct Mail on the right-hand side.

Now, to make you feel as if you've made no progress at all, you are brought back to the first screen that you started with-this is the part that really confused me. 

At this point, you've got two options for selecting "EDDM Retail." You can again click on the EDDM Retail Button in the bottom left or you can click on the text “EDDM Retail” that appears in the blue bar that runs across the top of the page directly underneath the USPS Logo.

 

You will then be delivered to the screen below where you’ll be able to run a query/count or print all of the paperwork that you’ll need to launch an EDDM Retail Campaign.

After logging into the USPS Business Customer Gateway the first time, subsequent logins should be easier. Simply bookmark the page displayed below. Here's a live link to the page if you want to save it as a bookmark or favorite. You'll need to click the "EDDM Retail" button in the bottom left.

You'll then have to re-enter your username and password (unless you've programmed your browser to automatically store your password for this site). Then click the blue "SignIn" button.

Finally, you'll be back to the screen below where you’ll be able to run a query/count or print all of the paperwork that you’ll need to launch an EDDM Retail Campaign.

 

Yes, the USPS made a mistake by making EDDM Retail more complicated, but this does not negate the fact that EDDM is still a relatively simple and very cost-effective method for marketing to prospects located in a particular geography. If your most likely customers are located in a specific neighborhood and you're not already using EDDM, you could be making a huge mistake.

If you want to take advantage of this program, but don't want to worry about the tedious navigation and research involved, I hope you'll please contact me. I launch EDDM Retail campaigns every day for my clients.

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What do you think are the best and worst features of Every Door Direct Mail Retail? Please share your comments below.

How to Guarantee the Lowest Postage with Every Door Direct Mail

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Are you confused about the new Every Door Direct Mail program from the USPS? Are you trying to get the tantalizingly low 16 cent postage rate but not sure if your mailer qualifies? Then this post is for you.

The primary reason that there is so much confusion about the program is that there are actually two different programs: 1) standard Every Door Direct Mail and 2) Every Door Direct Mail Retail. The 2 programs have quite a few differences, but it’s Every Door Direct Mail Retail that offers the ultra-low postage of 16 cents apiece.

So what are the differences between standard Every Door Direct Mail and Every Door Direct Mail Retail?

• Where your bulk mail gets dropped off: With Every Door Direct Mail retail, your bulk mail gets dropped off at the regular retail mail counter, not to the Business Mail Unit (BMU).

This is a very important distinction, because the two programs also have different postage. If at all possible, you want to take advantage of the lower Every Door Direct Mail Retail postage rate of just 16 cents apiece.

With Every Door Direct Mail Retail, you can't just arbitrarily pick any post office because you need to drop your mail at the post office that handles the mail for the neighborhood or neighborhoods that you are targeting. You can determine the specific retail post office location by visiting the official USPS Every Door Direct Mail website.

How much money can you save on postage by using Every Door Direct Mail Retail? One of the people who contacted me was paying 8 cents more apiece for standard Every Door Direct Mail postage. You can see that this is a substantial difference.

What other factors influence which program you qualify for?
• The size and thickness of your direct mail piece: Even though Every Door Direct Mail Retail offers a low postage rate, your mail piece must qualify as a flat which means that it needs to be larger than 6" x 11", but smaller than 12" x 15". In addition, the mail piece must be at least 0.007 inches thick (a little thinner than a standard business card); standard copier paper will not qualify for the Retail rate postage.
• The quantity of pieces that you want to mail: With Every Door Direct Mail Retail, you can't mail more than 5,000 pieces from the same retail location on the same day.
• Do you have a permit? Every Door Direct Mail Retail does not require a mailing permit, so if you're a do-it-yourself mailer and don't want to pay the annual bulk mail permit fee, then EDDM Retail is definitely the option for you.

Are there any strong arguments against using the less expensive EDDM Retail option?

1) If you're sending a bulk mailing that is not in your immediate area, then you may want to consider avoiding EDDM Retail. For instance, if the retail post office that you'd have to use is more than 100 miles from where you are located, you would almost certainly spend more money on gas driving there then you would spend on the increased postage you could pay by dropping your mailing off at your local Business Mail Unit instead.

2) If you're planning to mail more than 5,000 pieces from the same retail location on the same day. Of course, if you have 15,000 pieces that you want to mail, you could always just mail them out on three consecutive days and stick with the lower EDDM Retail rate.

3) If you are sure that you do not want to mail a flat sized piece. For example if you want to mail a standard-sized postcard or letter, they will not qualify for Every Door Direct Mail Retail.

If you aren't stuck in one of these 3 categories, then in my opinion, you should absolutely use Every Door Direct Mail Retail. If you'd like more details on Every Door Direct Mail Retail, then take a look at my recent post New Business Mail Option: Every Door Direct Mail.

After reading this, it should be apparent that you MUST understand the details needed to qualify for a particular bulk mail program BEFORE you design and print anything. Please use this blog as your free resource for answering any bulk mail questions that you have.

The two easiest ways to find specific information on this blog are to search the "categories" cloud in the top left-hand corner of this blog, or to use the "search" box on the top right of this blog. Of course, if you still can't find the answer to your question, I hope you'll please contact me for help. You never know when your question may end up as a topic for a future blog post. Odds are that if you have a question, many of our readers are looking for answers on the same topic.

By the way, if you'd rather not deal with all of these details, you can always hire me to print and process your bulk mail campaign for you.

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What are your thoughts on the new Every Door Direct Mail program?  Please share your answers in the comments below.

Related articles

How Will the January 2013 USPS Postage Hike Impact You?

Bulk Mail Minimums

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One of the most common questions that I received is "What's the fewest number of pieces that I can mail and still qualify for the bulk mail discount?" It's probably fewer pieces than you think, but the answer to this question is "It depends."

This short post will explain the minimums for the different types of bulk mail programs currently available from the USPS.

Presort Standard = 200 piece minimum: When people think of "bulk mail" they typically think of presort standard. This is the lowest per piece postage that a business mailer can pay for an addressed mail piece.

If you plan to use direct mail to market to your existing customers then presort standard mail is almost always the most logical option.

Presort standard is also an attractive choice for sending targeted mailings to prospects that share common characteristic other than geography. For example prospect mailings the target Lifestyle Lists or Business Lists are strong candidates for presort standard postage.

By the way, precancelled stamps are a little known secret for bulk mailers who want to pay the presort standard rate, but want their mail to look like first class mail. You should never justify paying first class postage because you want your mail piece to have an actual stamp; using precancelled stamps solves this for you.

First Class Presort = 500 piece minimum: Many business mailers are not even aware that such a class of postage exists. The primary benefit of this type of bulk mail is that your mail gets forwarded if the addressee is not at their primary address at the time you send your mail.

Using first class presort postage saves you about ten cents apiece compared to regular 44 cent first class postage.

In my professional opinion, first class presort is generally not a smart option for typical business mail. This is particularly true if you are outsourcing your bulk mail processing to a bulk mail professional like me. Any bulk mailer worth their salt should automatically be running your mailing addresses through NCOA, the USPS's National Change of Address System.  The NCOA system identifies any addresses on your list with a recorded permanent change of address BEFORE your mail is addressed and mailed.

Saturation Rate = It depends: From a postage point of view, nothing is less expensive than the saturation rate. In fact, with the new Every Door Direct Mail Program postage is just 14.5 cents apiece and you don't even need a bulk mail permit.

To qualify for the saturation rate, a bulk mailer needs to mail to at least 1 carrier route. A carrier route is essentially a subsection of a zip code. Carry routes typically contain between 450-700 addresses.

Saturation rate mailings do not allow for the personalization of your mail piece, and these types of bulk mailings are only appropriate if you are trying to target prospects specifically by geography.

Nonprofit = 200 piece minimum: First of all, let me dispel a common myth; there is no such thing as "first class nonprofit." I get asked this question frequently and as appealing as it sounds, the USPS is just not that generous. You need to choose between either nonprofit or first-class.

Another common myth is that there's a fee associated with getting approved to mail at the nonprofit rate; this is not true. If you are a qualifying 501C3 organization, it is completely free. Here's a link to an article that explains how to get set up; it also includes a link to the paperwork that you'll need to complete and submit to the USPS.

Nonprofit bulk mail is really just a further classification of presort standard mail that’s mailed at a lower postage rate. The savings are substantial; on average postage for nonprofit bulk mail is about 10 cents less per piece then presort standard mail.

Automated nonprofit mail carries postage of about 15 cents apiece which is about one third the price of a current first class stamp. This is a pretty phenomenal savings!

I find that many smaller nonprofits in the US are not aware of how much money can be saved with nonprofit postage, and they don't know how easy it is to get set up to mail at the nonprofit rate.

A word of advice: A single-shot mail campaign is almost always doomed to fail. I mention this only because, the natural inclination of my typical business client is to want to mail to the largest possible audience.

The problem is that by mailing to the largest possible audience, you stretch your budget to a point where you typically don't have enough marketing dollars to reach the same audience more than once. A better way to invest your limited marketing dollars is to mail to a smaller audience at least three times instead of mailing to the larger audience one time.

It takes a lot of discipline to market this way, but marketing studies confirm that this is the right way to invest your marketing dollars and improve your return on investment.

Regardless of the bulk mail option that you choose, you have the flexibility to focus your mail marketing campaign on a targeted list that can be as small as just a few hundred records.

Social media marketing, videos and QR Codes have made it even easier for you to engage with your target audience using traditional marketing options like direct mail. Shouldn't you take advantage of these small minimums offered by the USPS? It's clear that a monumental investment is not required to launch a targeted direct mail marketing campaign.

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What bulk postage option makes sense for your organization? Please share your comments below.

The USPS Survival Plan and How It Impacts Bulk Mailers

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The Titanic hit an iceberg and ultimately sank because it moved too slowly to change course in time; the USPS is a very large organization facing similar challenges due primarily to dramatic decreases in mail volume.

According to a recent study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group, overall USPS mail volume has declined by 17% since 2006.

The encouraging news is that over the course of the last 12 months the USPS has taken some common-sense steps that are encouraging to business mailers. This post will share insights on what other changes you can expect from the USPS right now and in the near future, and how they impact business mail and bulk mail marketing.

Small Business Mail Pilot Program: In Raleigh, North Carolina and Austin, Texas the USPS created a new beta program called "Direct Mail Hub." In a nutshell, this new program is a web-based program that takes a stab at simplifying the bulk mail process. The USPS has indicated that this template-based system is specifically designed to get more small businesses using direct mail.

The next phase of this test system is scheduled to launch this August and it's called "Direct Mail Quotes." This program pairs small businesses with local bulk mail vendors who already have the necessary equipment to print and process bulk mail campaigns.

Finally, there's an online educational component tied to this new micro-site that offers advice on applying marketing strategies to small business direct mail campaigns.

Reply Rides Free: This year, the USPS also tested a pilot program for high-volume bulk mailers called "Reply Rides Free." This particular program applies to 1st class bulk mail only; it allows mailers to mail up to 1.2 ounces for the price of 1.0 ounce. The concept here is that the additional weight from the response card or reply envelope will not result in extra postage. Perhaps the USPS will expand this program next year to include small businesses too.

Reducing Post Offices: Even Postmaster General Donahoe knows that he needs to continue to reduce post office locations. A recent Business Week article compares the USPS to mail carriers in different European countries to see if any of their models could be applied in the US.

Many European countries rely almost exclusively on private companies to receive mail.  For instance, in Sweden only 12% of mail is goes through a post office. All but 2% of Germany's mail is handled by private enterprise. The most common model in Europe is to use existing businesses like grocery stores and convenience stores to process the mail dropped off by consumers.

Europeans also spawned some creative ways for their post offices to generate revenue. For instance Sweden's Posten built a smartphone app that creates instant postcards using digital photos captured on users' phones. They are also experimenting with different techniques that allow smartphone users to pay for postage using their phones.

Elimination of Saturday Delivery: While the majority of business mailers are not concerned about this, the postal unions are aggressively fighting elimination of Saturday deliveries. The truth is that this is one of the least disruptive ways for the USPS to save money.

Here's a link to an article that shows examples of PR and marketing campaigns launched by the postal union to fight this. What's your opinion on the elimination of Saturday delivery?

In earlier posts, I talked about encouraging steps that the United States Post Office has taken already this year for business mailers including the expansion of saturation rate, the launch of a simplified bulk mail program called, Every Door Direct Mail, and finally the three percent summer QR Code bulk mail discount. Can the USPS continue to take business-friendly steps like these that simplify bulk and make it more cost effective? I believe that the survival of the USPS depends on it.

Like what you're reading?  Have you signed up for my weekly enews yet or are you following my blog's rss feed?

What steps could the USPS take that would get you more excited about bulk mail? Please share your comments below.

New Business Mail Option: Every Door Direct Mail

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Bulk mail without a mailing permit?  Yes, it's now possible.  Postage as low as 16 apiece?  Yes, that's how the brand new Every Door Direct Mail program from the USPS works. 

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is perfect for the do-it-yourself local business owner or marketing professional who doesn't want to pay the annual expense for a bulk mail permit.  Read on to see how you can take advantage of this new program.

How do I figure out which areas to target?  To make this new program as user-friendly as possible, the USPS created a site that allows small businesses to locate the areas that they want to target for mailing.  You simply enter in your business address, and you can view a map that highlights the carrier routes that fall within a specified radius of your business.  You then select just the carrier routes/neighborhoods that you want to target, and the site will actually calculate the exact postage for you and even generate the necessary paperwor

What are the restrictions?

• The EDDM program applies to flat-sized pieces only, as defined by the USPS.  This means that postcards and standard size letters do not apply.  As defined by the USPS, to qualify for EDDM a mail piece needs to be either taller than 6.125" or longer than 10.5", but smaller than 12" x 15". Some of the most common approved sizes include
  • 6.25” x 9”
  • 8.5” x 11”
  • 4.5” x 12”
  • 7” x 9”
• The piece must weigh less than 3.3 ounces
• You must meet minimum thickness requirements of 0.007 inches.  To give you a perspective, this is just a hair thinner than a standard business card and substantially thicker than a sheet of copy paper.
• Your printed piece must contain the approved EDDM Postage indicia and simplified addressing format (see example below)

• You cannot mail more than 5,000 pieces in a one day using EDDM.
• You must insert a "facing slip" between every 50 copies of the piece that you plan to send.  A copy of the "facing slip" is generated for you by the EDDM website.

What's the minimum? You have to mail to at least one carrier route as defined by the USPS.  A "carrier route" is essentially a sub-set of a zip code.  In most cases, a single carrier route will contain somewhere between 400 and 700 addresses.

What does the USPS require before I can process an EDDM?  While a permit is not required, you need a "Customer Registration ID" also known as a CRID #.  There is no cost to obtain a CRID #, and you can sign up for one instantly online simply by providing some contact information about your business and an e-mail address.  Your 7-digit CRID # gets printed onto the paperwork that you drop off with the mailing.

Who can I target with these sorts of bulk mailings?  Saturation rate mailers can be sent to residential addresses and business addresses, or to residential addresses only.  As the program is set up now, there is no option to send to businesses only.

Where do you drop off your mailing?  The USPS website actually tells you where to go to drop off your mailing as you are completing your paperwork.  One of the unique features about this program is that Every Door Direct Mail gets dropped off at the retail counter of your local post office, NOT at the Business Mail Entry unit which is where other types of bulk mail get delivered.  Because of this it really only makes sense to work with someone in your local area to have these types of mailings printed and prepared.

When is EDDM not an appropriate option for businesses?
•    If you are planning to send bulk mail to an existing client list, this is not an appropriate option.
•    If your mail piece is letter-sized or postcard-sized it will not qualify.
•    If you are targeting businesses only, EDDM is not appropriate.
•    If you want to personalize your mail piece with the recipient's name, EDDM is not for you.
•    If your best customer-prospects are defined by specific demographics like income, age, gender, hobbies, political or religious affiliation then EDDM is not appropriate.

Here's a link to the EDDM site if you're ready to give it a try.

What if I want to take advantage of these low prices, but I don't want to do the work?  You can still take advantage of this low-cost, geography-based program by working with a local bulk mail professional like me.  We'll help you choose your target area, print your marketing piece, make sure that it meets all of the postal requirements, prepare all of the paperwork and deliver the mail to the post office for you.  Contact me if you'd like more information about this service or if you need a referral for someone in your local area.

While EDDM is an attractive new option presented by the post office, it may not be a good fit for all businesses.  On the other hand, if your best prospects are located near your business or in particular local neighborhoods, then it may be the perfect vehicle for you.  The post office has provided the double-incentive of very low postage, and they have removed many of the barriers to entry associated with traditional direct mail.

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Do you think your business is a candidate for Every Door Direct Mail?  Please share your comments below.

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