EDDM vs. targeted mail: which one fits your business?
If you've started looking at direct mail as a marketing channel, you've probably run into two terms: EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) and targeted mail (sometimes called "list mail" or "first-class mail"). They're different products with different costs, different targeting capabilities, and different right answers depending on what you sell. Here's how to choose.
EDDM: every home on a route
EDDM is USPS's list-free direct-mail product. You pick a postal carrier route, USPS delivers your card to every household on that route. No mailing list to buy or clean.
Cost: ~18–20¢ per piece in postage, plus printing. There's a size and weight requirement on the card to qualify (it has to be at least 6.25" × 4.25" — bigger than a standard postcard).
Targeting capabilities: route-level only. You can pick routes, and USPS's tool lets you filter by household income, age, and family size at the route level. But within a route, every household gets the card.
Targeted mail: a list of specific addresses
Targeted mail (also called first-class mail or address-list mail) requires you to maintain — or rent — a list of specific addresses. You print and mail to that list directly.
Cost: ~50–70¢ per piece in postage, plus printing, plus the cost of the mailing list ($0.05–$0.50 per name depending on quality and source).
Targeting capabilities: nearly anything you can buy data on — homeowners with a specific income and dwelling type, people who recently bought a home, businesses in a specific NAICS code, magazine subscribers, etc.
When EDDM wins
EDDM is the right answer when:
- Your customer is geographic. Plumbers, HVAC, roofers, lawn care, bakeries, restaurants, dentists, med spas — anyone whose customers live in a specific neighborhood and you don't need finer demographic targeting than "single-family homeowners with $X+ income."
- You want to blanket a neighborhood. If you're trying to be the name-on-every-fridge plumber for Farragut, EDDM is exactly the tool.
- You're testing direct mail and don't want to invest in list management. List mail has overhead — managing the list, cleaning bad addresses, paying for refreshes. EDDM removes all of that.
- Your offer works for everyone in a route. A clogged drain happens to 80%+ of homeowners eventually. A pizza coupon works for almost any household. Don't pay for narrow targeting if your offer is broad.
When targeted mail wins
Targeted mail is the right answer when:
- Your customer is narrow and identifiable. A real-estate agent farming households with mortgages over a certain LTV. A solar installer targeting homes built before 1990 with a south-facing roof. A B2B service targeting businesses with 10+ employees.
- You need recency triggers. Mailers timed to a recent home purchase, a recent wedding, a recent business filing. EDDM can't do any of those.
- Your offer is so specific it would waste money on broader audiences. High-end specialty services where 99% of homeowners aren't in the market.
The cost difference matters
The 30¢-per-piece postage savings on EDDM compounds enormously at scale. For a 3,000-home campaign:
- EDDM postage: ~$540
- First-class targeted postage: ~$1,950
That's a $1,400 difference in postage alone, before list costs. On a $300 Banjo Tech Standard tier (which uses EDDM), the entire ad — design, print, and postage — is cheaper than just the postage on a targeted-list 3,000-home solo campaign.
What about EDDM-Retail vs EDDM-BMEU?
Two flavors of EDDM exist. EDDM-Retail is what most small businesses use: you print up to 5,000 cards, fill out a form (PS Form 3587), and drop them off at any post office serving the routes you've selected. EDDM-BMEU is for larger volumes (5,000+ pieces) at a slight postage discount but with stricter handling requirements; it requires a permit imprint and a Business Mail Entry Unit drop-off. Banjo Tech handles all the EDDM logistics on shared cards, so you don't deal with either flavor directly.
Bottom line
For 90% of local service businesses in the Knoxville metro, EDDM is the right tool — and shared EDDM (where multiple non-competing local businesses split the costs of a single card) is the cheapest, most cost-effective version of EDDM available.
Targeted mail has a place. It's mostly a place for B2B, real estate, recent-mover plays, and very narrow specialty services. If that's not you, EDDM gets the job done for a fraction of the cost.