The Ins and Outs of EDDM – Every Door Direct Mail

The biggest mystery that small business owners always look to solve is how to get their name, offerings, and promotions into the minds and hands of potential customers. It’s a constant quandary. There’s so much noise in the marketing world, too. Do you go with digital ads? Emails? Or do you the classic route with billboards, flyers, and commercials?

Customers are just as inundated with marketing noise as you are. Their inbox is filled to the brim with promotions they’ll never open. They scroll by ads without a glance as they look for friend’s latest comings and goings on social media.

Important business is done through the mail. Our physical mailboxes have thinned out over the years, but people still check it. Did you know that 80-90 percent of direct mail gets opened, only 20-30 percent of email gets opened on a good day?

That means, you can get your message in front of 80-90% of your intended recipients when you send your promotions through the mail.

What is EDDM

EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail. When you use EDDM, your messaging is sent to desired recipients through location and demographic targeting and you pay only a small fraction of the amount it would normally cost for bulk mail.

EDDM is especially great, because you don’t have to provide a mailing list or anything. You just have to know what neighborhoods, household types, general locations, or demographics you’d like to target.

What sorts of businesses use EDDM?

Any small business can benefit from smartly used EDDM campaigns. For example, say you’re a restaurant. You’d like to reach local people in your area to get them in try your tasty dishes. You could send an EDDM campaign on a folded postcard that includes your take-out menu and a coupon for their first visit.
How about a local salon? You could send an EDDM campaign that promotes a lady’s night open house or simply introduce your services with a limited time offer. Urgent care facilities are hyper-local and depend on the local community to be successful, EDDM is a great solution for this.

Basically, if you’re a business that would like to generate extra foot traffic coming through your door or eyes on your website, EDDM is an amazing option to consider.

What types of campaigns can I run through EDDM?

If you can create a message through a postcard, you can use EDDM to promote it. Some of the most common ways that businesses use EDDM is to tell their customers about:

  • Weekly, monthly, or annual sales/promotions
  • Featured products and services
  • Business grand opening or new location opening
  • Tell new customers about your business for the first time
  • Distribute monthly news or insights
  • Coordinate a new location launch and target just the service area
  • Increase and keep constant brand awareness

Truly, the sky is the limit. Customers find mailed promotions far more personal than emailed notices, which means there’s a high chance that they’ll read whatever you have to say to them.

What can I send through an EDDM campaign?

EDDM campaigns are for flat mail only. It can’t be enclosed in an envelope or sent on flimsy paper. Whatever you send through EDDM needs to be strong and light enough to be mailed as a stand-alone mailpiece.

EDDM campaigns can be sent on mailpieces with a maximum size of 12″ x 15″ or you can use one of the following standard sizes:

  • 6.5” x 9”
  • 6.25” x 11”
  • 8.5” x 11”
  • 8.5” x 12”
  • 7” x 10” (folded in half)
  • 12” x 4” (folded in half)

Basically, for EDDM, you want a smooth, flat piece of mail that isn’t too heavy (under 3.3 oz). This could include all types of products like:

  • Small or large postcards
  • Take-out menus
  • Business flyers
  • Postcard magnets
  • Perforated coupons
  • Promos with peelable stickers affixed
  • Folded postcards
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What should I include on my EDDM mailpiece?

Think about it like this—these customers are being introduced to your business, potentially for the first time, through this small piece. What do you want them to know? Boil it down to a simple concept. Remember, a lot of your brand can be conveyed with images.

Now, let’s design this postcard with some have-to-have elements:

What problems can your product or service solve for the customer?

When you start planning your mailer, think about what you can do for the customer. While you may want to sing the praises of your business, most people are interested in how you can help their business. Define a problem that your promotion solves and focus your copy on that. From there, begin planning your design.

Start with an appealing, eye-catching picture and headline

People are visual. No one likes to read giant walls of text. The more you can convey with a simple picture and bold, concise headline, the better. You want to catch their eyes as they flip through the mail, so plan these two elements with care.

Plan your colors carefully

Once you know your header and image, you can use a website like coolors.co to create a color palette. Pick colors that match your logo and image elements. Use these colors for your fonts but keep legibility in mind. You’ll want to be sure that any text you use has great contrast when laid on the image. The simpler your color palette the better—for best results, stick to 3-4 colors max.

Call-to-action

A call-to-action instructs customers on what to do next. Ideally, what do you want them to do with the information you just gave them? Pick up the phone? Pay you a visit? Visit your website? Tell them clearly. Add a limited time or expiration date to increase the chances of them doing this action in a timely manner.

Leave room for the required Retail Indicia

EDDM Retail Indicia Postcard Mailing | MMPrint.comYou’ll need to include The Every Door Direct Mail™ (EDDM) Retail indicia in a clear space on the front of your mailer. If you’re not sure what to put here, we can help!

Designing a mailer is a lot of work. Expert design can make a huge difference on how effective your mailing ends up being. If you’re not sure where to begin with the design process, reach out to us. We can handle your EDDM campaign every step of the way. Our expert designers will create the perfect postcard for your message and, after printing and finishing, it’ll be sent on its way to greeting your customers at their mailbox.

3 Key Marketing Tips for the Modern Real Estate Agent

In today’s fierce Real Estate market you have to stay on your toes. Marketing your open houses, agency, available properties and yourself as a Real Estate agent is a key component to drive business, sales and changing that For Sale sign into a Sold! sign.

As a printing company we get to see what is new and what is working across different markets using different strategies. Here are some key marketing tips inspired by what we have seen work best for real estate agencies and agents in their marketing efforts:

Content is King

1. Apply the Content is King Concept to your Real Estate Marketing Efforts

To begin with, most home buyers want to know what they are getting and how much it costs; They peruse through the property listings on your website and find a few pictures, a list of features and a few bullet points with a sales price which gives them the skinny on the property. But where is the value?

Content is King is a phrase well known to today’s internet marketers, SEO gurus and social media experts. It’s a very successful concept on the web and has been for years, these days even more so. Content adds value to a product beyond its functions or assets. Is there a positive story behind the property, the street or the town? Did someone famous or worth mentioning live there at one point? Content can give a property personality; transforming a house for sale into a home for sale. Words can influence, that’s why Content is King.

 

For Sale Sign with QR Code 2. Modernize your Real Estate Marketing Materials

With the sharp increase in consumer purchases of smart phones, it is a big mistake not to consider incorporating mobile into your Real Estate marketing.

As a home buyer, I can remember the frustration caused by seeing a beautiful house with a for sale sign outside as I drove by and saying to myself: “I can’t wait to get home and look up the listing on that house!”
By the time I got home I had forgotten the address, the Real Estate Agency that was selling it and of course, I didn’t stop to write down the phone number on the sign.  For the Real Estate agent this meant a lost sale or a lost lead at the least.

Behold, the QR Code. It began as a special barcode to track car parts and has evolved into the connection between offline and online marketing. The QR Code can be scanned with a smartphone to display information or initiate an action on the mobile phone.

A For Sale sign with a QR Code on it can lead a person who is interested in the home to a mobile friendly website where they can view pictures and contact the seller or Real Estate agent. QR Codes can also store contact information directly into the mobile phone’s contact list simply by scanning the code. QR codes are open for personal and commercial use. Here is a list of free QR Code readers and generators.

 

Personalize Communications Variable Data Printing VDP3. Personalize Communications

Real Estate agents and agencies have access to a vast amount of data about potential customers and their interests. Too often, this data goes unused to its full potential when in reality, it is bursting with value.

There is a little hidden gem that doesn’t seem to get the exposure it deserves…yet! Only the big ad agencies and corporations seem to be using this technology to their advantage. The printing industry is currently experiencing a digital evolution and from it we have the birth of Variable Data Printing, also known as VDP.

Variable Data Printing is the personalization of each individual piece in a print run. Let’s say you have a database of 5000 potential home buyers and in that database you have details about the type of homes these potential home buyers are interested in purchasing: Cape, Colonial, Ranch, two family, etc.
In your magnificent database of real estate information you also have access to all of the listings of homes for sale that have these features.

Now tie it all together. A printing company with Variable Data Printing capabilities can take your database information (usually in MS Excel format) and customize each printed piece with information pertaining to the recipient such as their name and information related to their home buying interests such as images and open house dates.

Here is a sample Postcard with Variable Data Printing

 

Real Estate Variable Data Printing VDP Postcard

 

Here are the Variable Data Fields:

 

Variable Data Fields in Real Estate PostcardVariable Data Printing is a remarkable technology will absolutely increase your read rate. Most generic postcards are glanced at and discarded. If the recipient sees their name on it, they have a higher probability of reading all of your content and contacting you.

 

 

Have you used QR Codes or Variable Data Printing in your Marketing? What other technologies are you using in your Real Estate Marketing Campaigns?

Please comment below