Today its easy to find  articles regarding "inbound marketing" topics including SEO, social media, lead nurturing  and other sophisticated technologies to move leads into and through the "sales funnel". It has become passe to talk about more traditional "outbound marketing"  topics like radio & TV or print and direct mail. While we agree that "Inbound marketing" technologies are critical in tracking and improving  marketing ROI, they are usually slower than outbound techniques. For example, if you open a new store, waiting for  a new website to generate business initially could  be  slower than sending postcards or other forms of local advertising. The same could be true for new product introductions or any message that you need to push out to your target audience quickly.

So lets take a look at a new program that can offer savings up to  70% compared with  traditional direct mail.  The US Post Office introduced the EDDM - Every Door Direct Mail program  in late 2011 which has been so successful they hope to generate over $1 billion in revenue in 2012. So whats the big deal and who should be looking at this program as a potential marketing tool? This brings us to our question  regarding demographics versus geography.  EDDM can offer one of the best marketing values available IF you want to target a specific geographic area. If on the other hand, you need to target your messaging to only a specific demographic target market, this program might be less appropriate.

So if you are in the group needing to market to a defined geography, what are the benefits to this new program? The answer is it is a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional direct mail. Lets look at how the program works; You create a mailer up to a 12" x 15" Postcard, select a postal carrier route shown in online route maps, drop the batch off at the local post office and pay ¢14.5 each. You do not need a list, do not need to address , do not need a permit. A typical carrier route averages around 700 deliverable addresses so your total cost for that route would be 700 * ¢14.5 = $101.50 plus the printed cost of the 700 postcards. Need a steady stream of new prospects? Print a larger number of postcards and send out several routes per week based on budget.

Benefits of EDDM for Geographic Marketers

  1. The single rate of ¢14.5 delivers a 12" x 15" postcard which is  "massive ". This is three times larger than traditional "Jumbo Postcards" allowing for powerful creative, multiple offers and will stand out in the mail box.
  2. The simplicity of selecting a route and dropping a batch off at the post office with no address data or addressing expense make it very easy to do regularly. Traditional mailings involve many more steps have significant costs for list management and postal discounts were dependent on volume encouraging larger scale projects.
  3. Testing offers is very inexpensive by sending different promotions to different routes. Digitally printing can be used for short runs with specific offers and higher volume offset runs once you dial in an effective campaign.
  4. You can select some demographic characteristics by looking at the route statistics which include all basic demographic variables. If you don't like the routes "makeup" find a better route.

Think this might be something to consider for one of your marketing initiatives? Contact our Customer Service at [email protected] to learn how we can structure an EDDM program designed for your organizations needs.