Once you turn a great idea into a sound working concept, the sky is  the limit. The EDDM Campaign––designed and developed by the Postal Department––is the absolute right product at the right place at the right time for virtually any company or person wanting to reach their closest (or furthest) target markets.

EDDM enables you to send bigger mailers to select Postal Routes for just 14 ½ cents per address. As far as reaching out to your target market is concerned, this is the next best thing to a handshake––if you follow these Best Practices……

Spreading Out Your Budget

When planning how to best spend your 14 ½-cents-per-address budget, know that it has been proven to be more cost-effective to go after a smaller target area that has a better likelihood of responding to your offer and then hitting it several times.  If you were to send your piece out to your target market three times, your increased saturation can dramatically increase your exposure…and that will lead to a spike in your response rate.  When working on your budget, keep in mind the optional costs you also may incur for design and mail handling, discussed below.

Select Your Target Area

Most routes have from 300 to 800 addresses––we have a link for filling out the form for our Free EDDM Route Report .  Your target area will be determined by your marketing goals. There may be a lot of upscale homes close to your business, but perhaps you’re better off reaching a different demographic a little further away. Or perhaps there are a number of apartments nearby, but you want to reach homeowners a little further away. That’s the beauty of selecting your target market by Route.

Design Your Mailer

Okay, you’ve set your budget, you’ve established your target area by Routes, and now it’s time to design your mailer. Although this is the age of DIY, you’re better off having a professional design your piece. A pro can help determine the absolute best way to present your offer and design a quality piece for less than $200. You don’t need to pay any more than that for a well-designed mailer.

It’s important to know that you’ll pay the Post Office the same amount for a large piece as you do for a small piece, so if you want to stand out, opt for a larger design. The EDDM guidelines stipulate that you can send up to a 12” x 15” piece, which is 8 times the area of a regular postcard. And you’ll be sending it out for about half the price of a postcard.

Take it for a Test Drive

Unless you’re extremely confident that your piece will give you the best response rate, or you’re using a piece that has already proven to be effective, you’d be wise to do a test mailing first. Select one or two routes and gauge the piece’s performance after a couple of mailings. If you’re getting the response that you want, then go ahead and send it out to your entire target market. If you think the response could be improved upon, tweak your message/offer and once you’ve increased your response, send it out to everyone in your chosen Routes.

 

Select Who Mails

When it comes to setting up an account with the post office, preparing your pieces for mailing, and delivering the pieces to the post office, you have a choice––do it yourself or have someone familiar with the entire process do it for you.

The process works like this––first you open an account with the post office. You can do this online. You will select your routes and generate reports that you will take to the post office with your mailers. When preparing the pieces for mailing, they must be bundled in groups of fifty, numbered by group and then rubber banded. They are then delivered to the post office.

By doing this process yourself, you save the fee that we would charge, but not time. If you do it yourself, you have to factor in the amount of time you’re spending on the process and determine if it wouldn’t be more cost effective to have an outside source handle it for you. You can have the bundling done for just 3 cents per piece by us. A two thousand piece mailing would be bundled for $60. That firm can also set up your reports, fill out the bundle facing sheets and prepare the entire package for mailing.