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Every Door Direct Mail Retail Challenge: Are You Game?

Hey there guys and happy Thursday.  I’ve been under the weather this week but wanted to rock out this blog post for you.

I’ve often mentioned the Every Door Direct Mail Retail program and how I highly recommend it for small business owners wanting to promote and market their services on a budget. 

I’ve used the EDDM retail program for marketing in the past, and have received pretty good results from it.  If you’re not familiar with this program, here’s a little background on it.

The EDDM Retail program is offered by the USPS.  It allows you to send up to 5,000 mail pieces per day to local businesses in your area – (based on ZIP codes that you want to target).

Yes, I know that internet and social media marketing is all the rage these days – however direct mail and offline marketing strategies are still very effective as well.

On last month, I reached out to my designer who put together the post cards that I will be sending out for print to SonicPrint.(These guys are amazing). I am planning to have 1,000 postcards printed out to market my web design company.  Here’s a screenshot of the postcards that I will be sending out (Front and Back).

Postcard Front

EDDM Retail Example Front

 

 

Postcard Back

EDDM Retail Example Back

 

How to use the Every Door Direct Mail Program?

Here is a quick overview of how the program works:

1.  Figure out what size postcard or marketing piece you want to use.  The sizes you can choose from are as follows:

    1. 8.5 X 11
    2. 8.5 X 14
    3. 9 X 6.25 (This is the size of my postcard)
    4. 10 X 7
    5. 11 X 6.25
    6. 11 X 17
    7. 12 X 6

Sonicprint offers free templates that you can use as guides. You can view them at the bottom of their page.

2.  Create content for your mailpiece (front and back).  Be sure to include a great call to action.

3.  Add your designs and content to your mail pieces.  I usually outsource my design jobs via oDesk.com to a designer.  The one thing that you want to make sure is that your designer follows the EDDM template guides (height and width).  Again, Sonicprint is my go to source for printing these postcards …as they do an awesome job of making sure that your mail pieces meet the requirements for EDDM.

4.  Send your mail piece to an approved EDDM Retail vendor for printing.

5.  Head over to the EDDM Retail program website to search for ZIP codes that you want to target and send your mail pieces to.  Choose the ZIP codes that you want to target and print out your facing slips.  Here’s a video that shows you how to do this.

After you receive your postcards, head over to the local post office listed in your facing slips to send out your mail pieces.

This about sums up what you need to do to participate in this program.  If you decide to use this system, I would love for you to leave a comment about your experience and results.  Cheers and make it a great day yall!

Annika Bansal
 

Annika "The Chick Geek" is the founder of AnnikaBansal.com. Small Business Sense shares small business ideas, tips and resources for independent Entrepreneurs and Small Business owners.

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Mia Evans

Thanks for pointing out that direct mail strategies are still very effective up to this day. I guess it would be best for small businesses to invest in all the marketing strategies they can afford if they plan to achieve a huge goal sooner. It will definitely help them reach more people as soon as possible.

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