EDDM, explained

What is EDDM?

EDDM — Every Door Direct Mail is a USPS program that delivers your postcard to every mailbox on the postal carrier routes you choose. There's no mailing list, no names, and no individual addresses — you pick neighborhoods, and the post office carries your piece to every door on those routes.

That's what makes it cheap: because you're buying coverage of a route instead of individually addressed mail, the postage is a fraction of First-Class. It's built for local businesses that want broad neighborhood awareness — restaurants, salons, dentists, home services — rather than a precisely targeted list.

EDDM comes in two flavors: EDDM Retail (up to 5,000 pieces/day per ZIP, the simplest to start) and EDDM BMEU for higher volumes. Everything below is EDDM Retail — the version most small businesses use. (For how these differ from traditional bulk mail, see EDDM vs. bulk mail.)

What does EDDM cost?

EDDM has two real costs: postage (the USPS EDDM Retail rate per piece) and printing (the postcards themselves). Do it yourself and you pay each separately, plus your time filing the paperwork and dropping trays at the post office.

Done-for-you, it's one flat all-in rate. Ours starts at $0.86 per piece and drops to $0.66 at higher volumes — and that number already includes printing, postage, and delivery. A typical neighborhood of about 1,000 mailboxes runs around $1,000, all in.

EDDM size requirements & indicia

To mail at EDDM Retail rates, a piece has to be bigger than a standard letter — it must exceed 6⅛ inches tall or 11½ inches long, or be thick enough to count as a flat. That's why EDDM pieces are large postcards, not letter-size mailers.

Our postcards are 6.5 × 9 inches — comfortably over the EDDM Retail minimum, big enough to make an impression in the mailbox, and efficient to print and bundle. (For layout principles, bleed, and safe zones, see the postcard design guide, and for the marketing case see business postcards.)

What's the EDDM indicia? The indicia is the printed postage mark that replaces a stamp, paired with the “ECRWSS / Local Postal Customer” addressing line. It has specific placement and format rules — but you don't have to design or position it. On a done-for-you campaign, the printer imprints the correct indicia and customer line on every piece.

Why not just use the free USPS EDDM tool?

You can — and USPS delivers the mail either way; we run on the exact same postal rails. But the free EDDM tool only does one thing: it shows you routes and takes your postage. It doesn't tell you which neighborhoods are actually worth mailing, design or print anything, bundle and tag the pieces to spec, fill out the forms, or get the trays to the right post office.

That's the 90% of an EDDM campaign that decides whether it works — and it's exactly the part the free tool leaves on you. It's the difference between being handed the keys to a print shop and having the finished mail land in the right mailboxes.

The USPS tool is genuinely free — but "free" only covers the postage. The printing, the design, the bundling, the forms, the trips to the post office, and the guesswork about which neighborhoods to pick are all still yours. Our flat rate already includes the same USPS postage, plus all the work the free tool hands back to you. Pick a neighborhood, approve a design, and you're done.

How to run an EDDM campaign

1. 1

   Pick your business type and drop a pin

   Choose from 22 local categories and set your location — this is how we recommend the right neighborhoods, not just the closest ones.

2. 2

   Review recommended neighborhoods

   We suggest routes of about 1,000 mailboxes each, matched to your category, and show how many competitors already serve each one. Adjust freely.

3. 3

   Add your design

   Start from a template already sized to spec, or bring your own. Indicia and the postal-customer line are handled.

4. 4

   Pick a drop date and pay once

   Choose a delivery date at least two weeks out. One flat payment covers printing, postage, and delivery.

Is EDDM right for your business?

EDDM works best when most households in a neighborhood could plausibly become your customer — everyone eats out, gets haircuts, needs a dentist. For those broad-appeal local businesses, saturating a well-chosen neighborhood at $0.66–$0.86 a piece is hard to beat.

If instead only a small share of homes will ever need you — a high-ticket home-service trade like roofing or HVAC — blanket mail wastes most of the run, and targeted direct mail usually wins instead. We help you choose (and sell both).

EDDM questions, answered