Direct Mail vs. EDDM: Choosing the Right Strategy
By Paul Bobnak | October 2, 2024
Direct Mail vs. EDDM: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Marketing Campaign
Traditional direct mail and EDDM both offer specific advantages to be considered by companies and organizations in meeting their goals, while building or finding an audience and keeping costs affordable.
Understanding Direct Mail
Direct mail marketing works well today based on more than a century of experience. Ink on paper, with all of its longevity, has both pros and cons to be weighed by businesses of all sizes.
Definition and key features
Direct mail is a marketing strategy in which companies and organizations mail marketing materials to consumers and businesses.
These campaigns use a variety of formats, such as letters, brochures, folded self-mailers, and postcards. They target customers based on segmented and personalized data, such as purchasing behavior, demographic information, or other important criteria.
Advantages of direct mail
The best reasons to use direct mail have been well-known for many years and include:
Familiarity by both marketers and audiences
Ability to reach large audiences easily in more places
Multiple physical designs and formats
Trusted for transactional, legal, and operational messaging
Wide variety of physical, tactile experiences are possible because of appeals to senses (sight, sound, touch, smell)
Segmentation and personalization increasingly used to right-size marketing campaigns and spend
Strong popularity among members of digital-first millennials and Gen Z
Understanding Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM)
EDDM began in 2011 as a way to provide a way to help mailers target prospects by geographic selects. More than 33 billion pieces have been delivered over that time, 3 billion in 2023 alone.
Definition and key features
EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail, a U.S. Postal Service program that lets you reach every household within a defined geographic area.
This bulk mail approach is especially useful because it provides an opportunity to maximize opportunities to market products and services that everyone — or nearly everyone — needs.
Advantages of EDDM
EDDM was designed to offer several advantages to marketers looking to drive business, such as:
Targeting of specific neighborhoods, postal routes, or other geographical segments. With saturation mail campaigns, you have a much broader reach but at a lower postage cost.
Because individuals aren’t targeted, there’s no need to rent mailing lists. This also results in significantly lower data costs.
Direct Mail vs. EDDM: A Comparison
Here’s a quick rundown of how to compare both options.
Targeting capabilities
Any discussion comparing direct mail vs. EDDM must consider how each targets audiences.
Direct mail – targets audiences based on one or more segmentation factors such as demographic, behavioral, and psychographic as well as geographic; individual pieces can be personalized with variable data printing (VDP)
EDDM – targets audiences based only on geography
Cost considerations
A lot of factors and variables make up the costs of direct mail vs. EDDM. Each comes with its own advantages that have to be carefully weighed against others when planning a campaign. Here’s a breakdown of some of them:
Fixed costs – standard expenses for services or goods that don’t change regardless of the quantity mailed or client such as set-ups, project management, design and copywriting, and consultation fees
Variable costs – charges for items or services that usually change from one campaign to another, such as data (lists, tracking and analytics), postage (depends on quantities mailed, format, mail class, etc.), printing (paper, ink, coatings/finishes, printing process, quantities produced, printing process, labor)
EDDM – is a simpler bulk mail strategy with lower variable costs (especially data) than direct mail, though its ROI may be lower because it is targeting only 1 segment only
Direct mail – could involve higher variable costs but because of a more focused strategy, may produce a higher response rate and ROI
Design and format options
Design is an important element in comparing direct mail and EDDM. Besides USPS guidelines, each impacts how prospects and customers are likely to respond to them.
Direct mail – includes a variety of dimensional and weight options such as folded self-mailers, letters, flats, and postcards that can be mailed at either First Class or Marketing Mail rates, depending on several factors
EDDM – is Marketing Mail only; as flats, pieces must meet similar guidelines as other flats but tailored for EDDM
Direct mail gives marketers many design options to engage customers and drive response. EDDM’s more narrow range of choices are designed to emphasize creating impressions and building brand at scale but a lower per-piece cost.
Choosing Between Direct Mail and EDDM
Considering whether to use traditional direct mail or EDDM means figuring out which works best for your marketing campaign. Here is a quick breakdown of what to review as part of your planning.
Factors to consider
Understanding which method is better depends on reviewing these key considerations:
Budget – lower printing and postage or higher-impact personalized mailpieces
Target audience – broad vs. segmented and personalized
Campaign goals – branding and lead generations or measurable response and ROI
When to use direct mail
Direct mail is the best choice for:
Offers and messages targeting specific segments
Personalized and more relevant campaigns that produce higher response and better LTV
Mailpieces that leverage the visual and tactile power of paper, ink, finishes, and embellishments
Marketers that need to reach prospects and customers more quickly than EDDM
When to use EDDM
EDDM is the best choice for:
Campaigns that target only a broad audience
Simple, easier-to-print and mail formats such as postcards
Mailings that aren’t as time-sensitive as First Class Mail
Marketers that need to reach a broad local customer base, such as brick-and-mortar retailers and service providers
Combining Direct Mail and EDDM
How you reach customers and prospects will vary depending on your audience, budget, time, and other factors. As noted above, either direct mail or EDDM may work best at producing that ROI or other metric that you desire. On the other hand, some campaigns may work best when they incorporate both.
The benefits of an integrated approach
When you combine direct mail with EDDM efforts, you can:
Generate more leads and develop buyer personas using data collected from multiple touchpoints
Attribute actions and sales to the correct channel
Build or reinforce your branding and loyalty with direct mail pieces that provide staying power as well as pass-along value
Target segmented audiences using personalized copy, images, and offers on mailings produced with VDP
Engage customers at a deeper level
When both are available, they offer you a full range of options for your marketing campaigns, helping you decide what methods or combinations work best to meet your goals.
Strategies for implementation
When integrated with each other, direct mail and EDDM create and deepen comprehensive customer relationships.
Combine these approaches into an effective strategy by:
Using EDDM to target a broad geographical segment with an offer or message
Complement it with a synchronized campaign that targets specific segments with personalized direct mail pieces
Track and analyze response to measure the effectiveness of both direct mail and EDDM
Wrapping it up
The benefits of direct mail marketing – as noted above – are many and well-understood. It’s one of many reasons mailing.com has grown and thrived for over 50 years. At the same time, we understand that EDDM can build overall conversion rates and ROI.
Are you looking for a direct mail marketing partner that can help you with the right strategy for your audience? Contact our team today to talk about how we can help your company or organization!
