EDDM Continued...

What Businesses Benefit Most From EDDM

EDDM's saturation mailing is different than a targeted mailing that uses demographic characteristics (such as household income, age, gender, ethnicity or presence of children) or other criteria (such as owning a swimming pool or specific make of a vehicle) for determining who to mail to. Generally speaking, unless your customers are a broad cross section of the population, a targeted mailing is probably best.

But if you are a retailer or service-based business that wants to build foot traffic and or your customers are clustered in a neighborhood, the EDDM could be ideal. A neighborhood could be a radius around your location or could be a neighborhood you want to prospect in. Some examples or businesses that benefit from EDDM include fast food, take-out or neighborhood restaurants; florists, bakeries and convenience stores; service and repair (automotive, computer); personal services (beauty and barber shops, dry cleaners; pharmacies; car washes); and home services (house, carpet and window cleaning; landscaping/yard service; pest control; handyman services).

There is no restriction on the content of EDDM, so you can use it for a variety of purposes including announcements (grand opening, business anniversary, holiday promotions); to send coupons and special offers; to promote sales and events; or to acquaint potential customers with your hours and operation and location.

Designing the Mail Piece

Because an EDDM mail piece doesn't require a large mail panel to accommodate the address and because the physical specifications for flats allow a wide variety of sizes, there are more design options than are possible with a smaller mail piece. For example, you may be able to include several coupons as part of the mail piece, to be used for different products or services, or having different expiration dates.

Because there are so many possibilities and the physical specifications for EDDM are strict, we suggest you have us design your EDDM mail piece. The USPS continues to adjust EDDM specifications, and we are notified whenever changes occur. We will make sure the mail piece complies with the most up-to-date USPS size specifications and also has the proper indicia for EDDM and wording for the simplified address.

How Often To Mail

When it comes to deciding how often to mail, EDDM is no different than any direct mail marketing program. Mailings need to be periodic and ongoing. We suggest mailing every 4 weeks and once started, to continue mailing indefinitely. The results of regular, repeat mailing are cumulative-the more you mail, the more likely the recipients will remember your name and come to your business when they have a need you can fill.

Get Results With EDDM

Since the launch of EDDM in 2012, over one billion pieces have been printed and mailed- and the number continues to grow. Businesses everywhere have come to rely on EDDM as a cost effective way to build traffic and attract new customers. For help planning and carrying out your EDDM campaign, call us at 254-773-7391. We'll show you your options and demonstrate just how cost effective marketing with EDDM can be.

Direct Mail Made Easy: USPS EDDM

Direct Mail Made Easy: USPS EDDM

In our last Blog, we discussed the viability of direct mail as a marketing tool and presented the elements that make up a successful direct mail campaign.

In this issue, we are introducing a simple first-step campaign for businesses that are new to direct mail or have a smaller budget. The program is called Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) and it does just what its name implies- the letter carrier delivers your direct mail piece to every single active address in a neighborhood along with the rest of the day's mail.

Here's what make EDDM different from regular direct mail marketing:

• you don't have to put an address on the mail piece, and
• the postage rate is the lowest one offered by the USPS- currently about 17 cents per piece mailed.

So, in addition to saving between 40% and 70% on postage, there is no need to spend money on purchasing a mail list, checking the names and addresses for deliver-ability, or affixing labels.

History of EDDM

Every Door Direct Mail was developed by the USPS as a way to help local businesses build sales using direct mail marketing. Announced in December 2010, the USPS tested EDDM for two years (2011 and 2012) before making it a permanent product offering in January 2013. During the test period, the USPS heavily promoted the use of EDDM to businesses and to professional mailers and launched a number of online tools that explain and help mailers implement EDDM. As it gains experience with EDDM, the USPS keeps making changes in the program to improve it.

In mailing terms, EDDM is a saturation mailing--meaning it targets every active residential/business address in a carrier route--using a simplified address--Postal Customer or Residential Customer and sometime the city, state and Zip Code. Before EDDM, the USPS had restrictions on using the simplified address format on city routes, making it unavailable for almost all mailers. For EDDM mailings, USPS regulations were changed to allow simplified format for city routes.

EDDM also requires that a mail piece meet the physical standards for a flat--basically, an over-sized mail piece. The reason for this is that letter sized mail, including the 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 size that is so popular for post cards and self-mailers, is provided to letter carriers in fully-sorted, line-of-travel order.

Flat mail is not co-mingled with letter mail during sortation (think of when your letter carrier hands you letter-sized mail, then separately hands you magazines, large catalogs, and envelopes and other over-sized mail). So, because EDDM is flat mail, it bypasses line-of-travel sortation and thus requires no other instructions to the letter carrier than to add one piece to the day's mail being delivered to each active address.

The requirement that EDDM be flat mail does not mean that there is only one size that meets the requirement. On the contrary, it opens up a lot of very interesting size possibilities for the direct mail piece that will:

• make it stand out from the rest of the mail;
• provide more room for the advertising message;
• still be cost-effective to print

For more information or to get started with an EDDM project, call us at 254-773-7391 or visit us at www.papergraphicsltd.com.