Every Door Direct Mail is a direct mailing program that the USPS has been promoting to small and medium sized businesses who want to use direct mail to promote their businesses, but might not have had the budget to do so in previous years. I’m going to go through exactly what Every Door Direct Mail is, how it works, and what types of businesses should be using it.
What is Every Door Direct?
Every Door Direct is a direct mailing program offered by the USPS, which allows businesses to target homes and businesses in specific geographic areas. A business can target homes and businesses based on specific zipcodes, or a certain mile radius from a specific address. You choose the area that you want to target by using a simple tool on the Every Door Direct Mail website. You can check out the search tool and see how easy it is to use by clicking here. The postage is as low as 14.5 cents per piece, which allows small and medium sized businesses an incredibly affordable way to run a direct mail campaign.
Once you complete your search you can hone down your list by carrier route, whether or not you want your mail to go to homes and businesses, P.O. boxes, or just homes. At least 200 pieces of mail has to be sent out, and it cannot be more than 5,000 pieces per day (it is possible to send more than 5,000 pieces a day with EDDM, but we find that most local businesses don’t need to. If you do need to send more than 5,000 pieces a day, feel free to call for details). There are also specific size formats the mail has to adhere to. A mail piece must be at least 10 1/2 inches long OR 6 1/8 in height. It does not have to be both it only has to be one or the other. The EDDM website still has the old specification of 11 1/2 in length but I have spoken to our local Post Master personally and he confirmed that it can now be 10 1/2.
Typically, mail pieces for Every Door Direct are postcard advertisements or brochures. Pending on the type of business you are promoting usually determines the best type of mailing piece to create that will get the best responses. Feel free to call JBS Printing at 781-871-4705 for a free consultation as to what would be the best type of mail piece to design for your business.
When you have your mail piece designed and printed and your target routed picked out, it’s pretty much just a matter of printing out your paperwork, which the EDDM website does for you, bundling your mail pieces correctly, and bringing them to your local post office. You mail is then delivered to every address on the postal route(s) you selected. You can do all of the paperwork and mail preparation and bring them to the post office yourself, or you can have your print service provider do it for you if they are familiar with Every Door Direct Mailing. There is typically a fee for them to prepare the mail and deliver it, but it is much better, and will save you time by having someone familiar with EDDM do the work. Your time is much better served running your business than doing a job that you can pa someone else to do for you.
What is the difference between Every Door Direct Mail and Traditional Direct Mail?
There are a few differences between Every Door Direct and standard traditional direct mail. The first is the size of the mail piece that can be delivered as mentioned before. With Evey Door direct the mail piece has to meet certain criteria, where traditional direct mail allows you to send out smaller pieces such as a standard 4 x 6 postcard, a small tri-folded brochure, or a letter inserted into a standard sized business envelope. These sized pieces do not qualify for Every Door Direct Mail. However, in our experience you are better served sending a larger piece anyways, because it will get more attention when it is delivered to someone’s mailbox, and will not go unnoticed as a smaller mail piece would.
We also find that you are better off sending a postcard or larger sized brochure as oppose to a letter inserted into an envelope, because recipients tend to read a postcard or brochure instead of opening a letter they might deem as “junk mail”. Plus with the low pricing on postage you can now send out bigger, eye catching mail pieces for alot less than traditional direct mail, so it only makes sense to want to send out bigger pieces, which typically lead to better response rates.
The added expense of purchasing a mailing list is also no longer needed. Unless you need to have a specific targeted list, you don’t have to purchase a mailing list. This is where business owners can start to see the substantial savings by using Every Door Direct over standard direct mail. One of the big reasons why so many businesses shied away from direct mail was the cost of the mailing list, now you can skip that added expense.
Some businesses do need to target specific criteria, and pending on the business you might see better results if you need to have your list super targeted as opposed to using Every Door Direct. The disadvantage is that if you need to have a laser targeted list is that you might have to pay a bit more per piece for postage, but the advantage is, you will not be spending money mailing to prospects that will never have a use for your product or services. It is best to call your direct mail provider to see which is the best direction for your business to go in.
Along with not needing to purchase a mailing list, businesses also no longer need to have each piece printed with and address on it for each address they are mailing to. Again this leads to big savings in cost by eliminating this extra step. Because you are targeting every address on a specific carrier route, the mail carrier simply drops off one of your mail pieced to every stop they make.
Should my business use Every Door Direct?
If you market to the general public then Every Door Direct will be perfect for your business. Industries such as restaurants, dentists, gyms and fitness studios, and hair salons, are a few of the types of businesses that will benefit from Every Door Direct because they appeal to a wide variety of people.
If your business markets to a very specific type of person, or if your are a B2B, you may be better off using traditional direct mail, because you will need a very targeted list to reach your ideal clients and customers. When you have a specific service and a specific type of client you will benefit more from sending out to a smaller targeted list instead of saturating a specific area.
There are ways to target using EDDM, and pending on how targeted you have to be, it may work for you or it may not. For instance, let’s say you own a pool cleaning and maintenance business. With Every Door Direct you can target streets in a zip code that have a large number of pools on it, and only mail to those homes. Another example would be if you own a tree removal company or landscaping company. You can target streets that have homes with large yards and a large number of trees on it. This way you are not spending money on mailing to apartment complexes that most likely won’t have a need for your service. It’s still not the super targeting you can do if you went out and purchased a list, but this method of ge0-targeting works great for the local business who wants to target specific areas in towns. The best way to find out which method of marketing is right for your business is to give us a call, and we can evaluate the best way for you to advertise.
How do I get started with Every door Direct Mail?
If advertising an getting new clients in your local area is something that you are interested in, then the first thing you want to do is contact a printing company that offers Every Door Direct Mailing Services. From there you should discuss what type of mail piece you want to send out, what areas you want to target, and what would be the best plan of attack (Do you want to mail out once a week, once a month, every day, etc.).
From there you need to decide on the design of the mail piece. Is it a one time sale, is it going to be an on going promotion, or a general advertisement? Pending on what type of advertisement it is will determine on the amount of mail pieces you need printed. If it is going to be an ongoing promotion or a general advertisement, then you are better off printing a large quantity which will allow you better per piece pricing because the information will not be changing.
If it is a one time promotion, a week long sales for instance, then you have to determine how many you will need for that campaign, and you will probably not want to print a large quantity because they will of no use once the promotion is over. Again, spending a few minutes talking to your print provider is the best approach to find out the best way to run your campaign and get the most bang for your buck.
Does Every Door Direct Mail Work?
At the end of the day, all that matters is if Every Door Direct Mailings will bring in new business and sales for your company. There are many factors that go into a successful direct mail campaign, and when done right, direct mail is one of the best ways to advertise, especially for local businesses. The key is to be consistent. If you are just going to mail once then you will be wasting your money. You need to mail on a regular basis, whether it be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. But with the cost of Every Door Direct being so low and flexible, you can now advertise on a regular basis without having to spend a fortune.
Timing is also a factor, you don’t want to advertise a deal on snow tires in the middle of summer, you would want to do a mailing in the fall or close to the winter months when people are thinking about getting snow tires for their car. But on the flip side of that, if you own a take out pizza restaurant and say, Wednesday is your slow day, then you might want to send out a weekly promotion of a buy one pizza get a free small cheese pizza on Wednesdays to bring in traffic on your slow day.
Direct mail is a very effective form of advertising when done right. Consulting a professional is the best plan to take to make sure you maximize your advertising dollars to their fullest.
If you would like to learn more about Every Door Direct and Direct Mailing call JBS Printing for a free, no obligation consultation. 781-871-4705
JBS Printing, LLC 1401 Hanover Street Hanover, MA 02339 781-871-4705 www.jbsprinting.net
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