What is EDDM? A plain-English guide for small businesses
If you've ever gotten a glossy postcard from a local business — a roofer, a plumber, a new restaurant — and noticed it didn't have your name on it, just Postal Customer or Local Resident, that's EDDM. EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail, and it's a USPS program designed to let small businesses advertise to every home on a chosen postal carrier route without having to buy, clean, or manage a mailing list.
How EDDM actually works
Normal direct mail (sometimes called "first-class" or "targeted" mail) requires a list: names, addresses, and usually some kind of targeting filter. You either maintain that list yourself or you rent it from a data broker. Postage is typically 50¢ or more per piece, and handling the list is surprisingly expensive and error-prone.
EDDM skips the list entirely. You tell USPS "please deliver this postcard to every house on route 101, route 102, and route 103," drop off the printed cards at a post office, and the mail carriers drop one in every box on their route the next day. USPS charges roughly 18–20¢ per piece for EDDM-retail delivery — about a third of the cost of first-class mail.
On USPS's EDDM tool, you can see every carrier route in the country and filter by household income, age, and number of homes. That's how companies like Banjo Tech select routes: we pull up the routes around, say, Farragut or Oak Ridge, filter for single-family homes and a minimum household income, and pick the routes that give the best combination of density and match-to-advertiser fit.
What EDDM is good for
EDDM is tuned for one specific job: blanket coverage of a physical neighborhood. That's why it works so well for local service businesses:
- Plumbers, HVAC, electricians, roofers, locksmiths — anyone whose customers live in a home and need a name on the fridge for when something breaks.
- Landscapers, lawn care, tree service, pool service — anyone who works on the property itself.
- Remodelers, painters, flooring, windows — higher-ticket home-improvement services that benefit from repeated familiarity.
- Restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops — walk-in-driven local businesses that want their new neighbors to try them.
- Dentists, med spas, chiropractors — practices that serve a local radius and rely on new-patient offers.
What EDDM isn't good for
EDDM is a neighborhood tool. It isn't a demographic tool, and it isn't a retargeting tool. If your ideal customer is "women 25–34 who follow three specific beauty influencers," EDDM can't find them. (Facebook can.) If you sell nationally or only ship, EDDM is overkill. If your offer is time-sensitive down to the hour (think flash sales), email or SMS is better — mail takes 1–3 weeks to arrive.
Solo EDDM vs. shared EDDM
The traditional way to use EDDM is to print your own postcard and mail it yourself. That's what you'd call solo EDDM. Here's the typical math for a 3,000-home Knoxville-area solo campaign:
- Design (outsourced): $300–$800
- Printing 3,000 cards on 14pt glossy: $400–$700
- EDDM-retail postage: $540 (at 18¢ per piece)
- USPS drop-off paperwork (your time): 1–2 hours
- Total: roughly $1,500–$2,000, plus your time.
Shared EDDM — what Banjo Tech does — splits those fixed costs across ~10 non-competing local businesses. Same route, same print quality, same USPS delivery. The only trade-off is that you share the card with other advertisers — but each category is exclusive, so you're never on a card with a competitor. Pricing on a Banjo Tech shared card starts at $300 per run (10¢ per home reached).
How to tell if EDDM is right for your business
Three-question sanity check:
- Does your typical customer live in a house within ~20 miles? If yes, EDDM can probably reach them.
- Can one new customer cover the cost of the card? A Banjo Tech Standard run is $300. If your average ticket is $200+ and you could close a single new customer from the card, the math works.
- Do you have a clear, specific offer? "Quality work since 1987" is not an offer. "$25 off any drain clean" is. Offers that ask the homeowner to do one specific thing convert.
If you answered yes to all three and you're in the Knoxville metro, take a look at Banjo Tech's tier pricing or browse the cities we mail to. If your city isn't listed, text us — we expand to new routes regularly.