EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail and is a program of the US Postal Service. It’s designed to help small businesses promote their products at an affordable price. But is it the right choice for you? Lets take a closer look.

There are two general categories of direct mail campaigns saturation and targeted. Saturation campaigns involve sending mailers to everybody within a particular area, while in targeted campaigns, you only send mail to particular people who you believe will be interested in what you have to offer.
EDDM is a saturation direct mail program.

The benefits of a saturation campaign include:

* It costs less. You only have to spend money for designing and printing the mailers and sending them out. You dont have to spend more to get a mailing list and printing mailing labels.

* You dont need to apply for a USPS mailing permit. You’ll not be able to make bulk mailings without a permit, unless you participate in the EDDM program.

* Under the EDDM, you’re entitled to a discounted postage rate. This means that you’ll spend less than you typically would with big direct mail campaigns.

* EDDM allows you to pick which ZIP codes to send your mail to, based on the demographics of the people living there. The EDDM mapping tool allows you to choose the carrier route based on income, age, and household size.

On the other hand, the drawbacks include:

* You’re sending out more mail than is actually necessary. Since you’re mailing to everybody along a certain route, there will inevitably be some spoilage since some people may not be interested in your business, and just throw away your mail.

* You’re only allowed to send flat mail of a certain dimension. This limits the type of direct mail that you can use, since you can’t send brochures or letters, for instance. On the other hand, the recipient can view the mail at once, which gives you a better opportunity to communicate your message.

* You must send mailers to at least 200 households per day. This reduces the amount of flexibility you can have in tailoring the number of mailings based on your budget.

In order to determine the costs of running an EDDM campaign, you can use the calculator on the site to determine how much you would spend based on the number of addresses on your route and the postage rate. You can thus determine if the cost is worth it based on the anticipated response, or if a targeted campaign that costs more would give you better results.