What Is EDDM, and Is It Right for Your Business?
Every Door Direct Mail lets you reach a whole neighborhood without buying a single address. Here is what EDDM is, how it works, what business only delivery means, and how to tell whether saturation mail fits your business.
EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) is a USPS program that mails your printed piece to every address on a postal carrier route without a mailing list or, for EDDM Retail, a permit. You pick routes on a map, print an oversized postcard to USPS size rules, bundle the pieces, and drop them at the Post Office. Choose residential, business, or both. It is a fit when geography predicts who buys from you.
Quick tips
Quick tips for a first EDDM drop
Pick the routes before you pick the paper. Match carrier routes to the people who actually buy from you, lead with one dated offer, and print an oversized postcard that clears the USPS EDDM size minimum. Bundle the pieces, fill out the facing slip and PS Form 3587, and drop them at the Post Office tied to those routes. Track the response with a QR code so your next drop is smarter than your first.
What is EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail)?
EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail, a USPS program that lets you mail a printed piece to every address along a postal carrier route without renting a single name or address. Instead of buying a list, you pick the routes on a map, print your mailer to a few simple rules, and the letter carrier who already walks that street delivers your card alongside the regular mail.
The point is reach without the overhead. A neighborhood restaurant, a new dental practice, or a lawn-care crew can put an offer in front of a whole community for a per-piece rate that undercuts a First-Class stamp. That is why EDDM has become the default entry point into direct mail advertising for local businesses. The closest fit at 4OVER4.COM is direct mail postcards, printed to the exact size and layout USPS wants for saturation mail.
There are two flavors worth knowing. EDDM Retail needs no permit, caps you at 5,000 pieces per ZIP per day, and you pay at the counter. EDDM BMEU handles bigger runs through a bulk-mail entry unit and does require a permit. Most first campaigns start with Retail, and you can browse the full lineup on our EDDM and direct mail printing page.
How does EDDM actually work?
EDDM runs on carrier routes, the fixed loops a letter carrier walks or drives every day. Each route is a bundle of addresses, and USPS lets you buy delivery to all of them at once. The workflow is short and repeatable.
- Design your mailer to EDDM size rules, with the address panel and indicia in the spots USPS expects.
- Choose your routes on the free USPS EDDM online tool by drawing around the ZIP codes you want.
- Print the run in the quantity your selected routes add up to, using the direct mail postcard configurator for live pricing.
- Bundle and slip the pieces into groups of 50 to 100, fill out the facing slip and PS Form 3587, and pay the postage.
- Drop it off at the Post Office tied to those routes, and the carriers do the rest.
If the paperwork sounds fiddly, it is genuinely a fifteen-minute learning curve. Our EDDM guidelines and file setup guide walks through the forms and the artwork checklist so your first drop clears the counter without a re-trip.
What does EDDM business only mean?
Here is the part most guides gloss over. When you open a carrier route on the USPS EDDM tool, it splits the addresses into two counts: residential and business. You are not forced to mail both. Selecting EDDM business only means you skip the homes on that route and deliver just to the commercial addresses, the shops, offices, warehouses, and studios.
That single toggle changes who EDDM is for. A wholesale supplier, a commercial cleaning service, a payroll firm, or a print broker does not want to land on a family's kitchen counter. They want to reach the businesses on a route, and business-only delivery does exactly that. The trade-off is volume: many suburban routes are mostly residential, so the business count can be small. Check each route's business number before you assume saturation will reach enough companies to be worth the drop.
For B2B senders, a heavier piece often earns its keep. A direct mail brochure or a folded card carries more of a pitch than a flat postcard, and it survives the trip to a decision-maker's desk. Pair it with a landing page and you can trace exactly which route replied.
Is EDDM right for your business?
EDDM is a saturation tool, so it shines when your ideal customer could be almost anyone in an area. Ask one honest question: does geography predict who buys from me? If the answer is yes, EDDM is probably a fit.
Strong fits tend to be local and repeat-purchase: restaurants and cafes, dentists and chiropractors, salons and barbers, gyms, auto shops, real estate agents farming a neighborhood, home services like roofing, HVAC, and landscaping, and grand openings of any kind. If a customer within a few miles is worth having, blanketing those miles makes sense.
Weaker fits are businesses whose buyers are specific and scattered, a niche B2B software seller or a luxury service with a tiny audience. For those, a rented, targeted list wastes less paper than a saturation drop. If you are unsure which camp you fall into, the direct mail response rate benchmarks and the direct mail versus email comparison give you real numbers to model against before you spend.
What does EDDM cost, and how is pricing set?
An EDDM campaign has two line items, and keeping them separate makes the math clear.
Postage is a flat, simplified per-piece rate set by USPS for EDDM Retail. It is the same for every address on the route and it sits below the cost of a First-Class stamp, which is exactly why saturation mail is affordable. You pay it at the Post Office when you drop the bundles.
Printing is where your choices show up. Size, paper weight, coating, quantity, and finishing all move the number, and you can watch it update live on the direct mail postcard price table as you configure. Bigger runs bring the per-piece cost down, so a route with more addresses is often cheaper per household than a small one.
The number that actually matters is cost per piece delivered, printing plus postage divided by quantity. Set that against a realistic response rate and an average order value, and you have a break-even you can defend. To pressure-test the return before printing, run your assumptions through the direct mail ROI data and calculator.
EDDM sizes and formats that qualify
EDDM Retail pieces have to be bigger than an ordinary postcard. The mail piece must exceed 6.125 inches in height or 11.5 inches in length, or be thicker than a quarter inch. That rule is why you rarely see a 4 by 6 card used for EDDM and why the workhorse formats are larger flats.
- 6.5 by 9 inches is the most popular EDDM postcard, big enough to command attention in the stack and cheap enough to mail in volume.
- 8.5 by 11 inches gives you a full-page canvas for menus, service lists, and coupons.
- Folded pieces and brochures qualify too when they hit the size minimums, and they carry far more copy for a considered purchase.
Whatever size you land on, the address panel, the indicia, and the safe margins have to sit where USPS expects them. Our EDDM postcard sizes guide and the every door direct mail postcard sizes reference lay out every dimension, and the templates over in design templates already have those zones marked so you are not guessing.
Get creative with your direct mail
Saturation mail does not have to look like everyone else's saturation mail. Because you own the whole page, EDDM is a chance to be the piece people keep instead of the one they toss.
Lean on the format. A heavier stock and a gloss or soft-touch coating signal quality before a word is read. A perforated coupon or a tear-off appointment card gives the recipient a physical reason to hang on to it. On a folded piece you can build a mini-story, a before-and-after, a menu, a checklist. For inspiration on what pulls, the 8 most effective direct mail formats and the brilliant examples of direct mail marketing are worth a scroll.
Then make it trackable. A QR code on your postcard turns a paper drop into digital data you can measure, and a unique promo code does the same at the register. Build the art fast in our Online Designer, and if you want the layout to sell harder, the 10 elements of an effective direct mail postcard is the checklist to steal.
Tips for a great EDDM campaign
The mechanics of EDDM are easy. The results come from a handful of habits that separate a drop that pays for itself from one that just decorates recycling bins.
- Lead with one offer. A single, dated, specific deal beats a wall of features. Give people a reason to move this week.
- Match the route to the buyer. Sort routes by income, age, or business count so your paper lands where your best customers already live or work, not just where the count is biggest.
- Put the call to action twice. Once on the front, once by the address panel, because both sides get seen on the walk from the mailbox.
- Mail more than once. Response climbs with repetition. A three-touch sequence to the same routes outperforms a single blast to three times the area.
- Time it. Hit the mailbox a few days before the weekend, the sale, or the season your customers actually buy in.
- Measure everything. A QR code, a promo code, or a dedicated phone number tells you which route and which offer worked so the next drop is smarter.
If you are also handing pieces out by hand or leaving them locally, the best practices for flyer distribution pair neatly with a mailed campaign, and the full direct mail campaign playbook ties the strategy together.
When a mailing list beats saturation
EDDM is not the only way to mail. Its strength, hitting every door, is also its ceiling. If most people on a route will never buy from you, you are paying to reach the wrong doors. That is the moment a targeted list earns its keep.
A rented or built list lets you mail named prospects who fit a profile, by industry, home value, purchase history, or life event. You pay more per piece and you need a permit and addresses, but you waste far less paper on people who were never going to respond. For a specialized B2B offer or a high-ticket service, that precision usually wins.
The honest answer for many businesses is both. Run EDDM for broad local awareness and a targeted list for your highest-value prospects. If you want to go the targeted route, our guide on how to build or rent a mailing list covers where lists come from and what a clean one costs, and the marketing materials hub rounds out the rest of your local toolkit.
Specs and pricing
Direct mail postcard specs and pricing
EDDM starts with the right piece. Here is what a made-to-order direct mail postcard gives you at 4OVER4.COM, with live specs and price-per-unit straight from the configurator so you can size a whole campaign before you commit.
| Quantity | Price Per Unit | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | 17.9¢ | $89.68 |
| 1,000 | 17.1¢ | $170.53 |
| 2,000 | 9.35¢ | $186.95 |
| 3,000 | 6.84¢ | $205.13 |
| 4,000 | 5.58¢ | $223.31 |
| 5,000 | 4.83¢ | $241.51 |
| 6,000 | 4.56¢ | $273.85 |
| 7,000 | 4.37¢ | $306.18 |
Print it
Order postcards and direct mail at 4OVER4
Wally explains EDDM
Reach a whole neighborhood without buying a single name
Wally thinks of EDDM like handing a card to everyone on the block at once, except the letter carrier does the walking. You draw the routes on the USPS map, choose homes, businesses, or both, print an oversized postcard to the size rules, and drop the bundles at the Post Office. No list, and for EDDM Retail no permit. Start with a sharp direct mail postcard built to spec at 4OVER4 and let the whole street find you.
Order direct mail postcards →See it in use
Real postcard work, printed in-house
Explore more
Where to go next
By the numbers
Printing you can count on at 4OVER4
Common Questions
Common questions about EDDM
What does 'EDDM business only' mean?
When you build a route on the USPS EDDM tool, each carrier route shows a count of residential addresses and a separate count of business addresses. Choosing business only means you drop the residential deliveries and mail solely to the commercial addresses on that route. It is the move for B2B senders, wholesalers, and service providers who want to land on the desk of a shop or office rather than a kitchen counter. Not every route has enough business stops to make it worthwhile, so check the numbers before you commit.
Do I need a mailing permit or a list to use EDDM?
No list, and for EDDM Retail no permit either. That is the whole appeal. Retail EDDM caps you at 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day and you pay at the Post Office counter. If you want to mail larger volumes or drop at a bulk-mail entry unit, EDDM BMEU requires a mailing permit, but most local businesses never need it.
How much does EDDM cost and how is pricing set?
Your total is printing plus postage. USPS charges a flat simplified per-piece rate for EDDM Retail that is lower than a First-Class stamp, and it is the same for every piece regardless of the exact address. Printing depends on size, paper, coating, and quantity, which you can see live on the direct mail postcard configurator. Add it up as cost per piece delivered, then weigh it against the response you expect.
How do I choose the right EDDM route for reaching businesses?
Start on the USPS EDDM map, drop a pin on your storefront, and look at the routes within your realistic service radius. Sort by the business address count if you are targeting companies, or by average household income and age if you sell to consumers. Pick routes where the people already look like your best customers instead of chasing the biggest raw count. Fewer, better-matched routes almost always beat a wide, generic blast.
What sizes qualify for EDDM postcards?
EDDM Retail pieces have to be larger than a standard postcard. The mail piece must exceed 6.125 inches high or 11.5 inches long, or be thicker than one quarter inch, which is why the 6.5 by 9 inch and 8.5 by 11 inch flat formats are so common. Our EDDM postcard sizes guide walks through the exact dimensions, and the design templates already have the address block and indicia zones marked out for you.
Is EDDM better than a targeted mailing list?
They solve different problems. EDDM wins when your customer could be almost anyone in an area, like a pizzeria, dentist, salon, or garage, because saturating a route is cheaper per piece than renting names. A targeted list wins when your buyer is specific and scattered, since you would waste most of a saturation drop. Many businesses run both, using EDDM for local awareness and a rented list for high-value prospects.
Can 4OVER4 help with the EDDM paperwork and file setup?
We print the piece to USPS EDDM specs and give you templates with the address panel, indicia, and safe margins already in place, so your artwork clears the counter on the first try. The bundling and the facing slip happen at your local Post Office, and the EDDM guidelines guide covers the file setup and forms step by step.
Get Started
Ready to print your EDDM campaign?
Pick your size, drop in your art, and we print a direct mail postcard sized to USPS EDDM specs so your first drop clears the counter and lands in every mailbox.
Legal Disclaimer
Gold Standard guarantees apply to all standard orders placed through 4over4.com. Price match requires verifiable proof of a competitor's published price for an equivalent product with matching specifications and turnaround time. Satisfaction guarantee covers manufacturing defects and print quality issues. Contact support with order number and documentation. On-time delivery rate based on tracked orders 1999 to 2026. Individual results may vary based on shipping carrier performance.
