And the Smarter Carrier Route Strategy HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical and Roofing Companies Use Instead
If you own or operate a business in the trades, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and similar services, and you are considering direct mail to acquire new customers, there is one decision that can quietly destroy your ROI before you mail a single piece: EDDM, or Every Door Direct Mail.
What EDDM Is and Why It Exists
In 2011, the United States Postal Service introduced a program called Every Door Direct Mail, or EDDM. The EDDM program was built for simplicity. It lets businesses mail an entire carrier route without buying or uploading a mailing list. This was designed to reduce setup friction for local businesses that want to execute local direct mail.
If you are unfamiliar with carrier routes, they are further breakdowns of ZIP codes and represent the exact routes your mail carrier delivers each day. Mailing carrier routes lets you target every home in specific areas while getting the lowest postage rate. By targeting carrier routes, you can get more granular about where you want to target prospects with your direct mail marketing without having to mail an entire ZIP code, while still maximizing your budget.
To remove friction and make it simpler for businesses to send out local direct mail, the USPS eliminated two requirements under EDDM:
- No physical address needs to be on the mailers
- No mailing permit is needed
Instead of buying a list and addressing each mailer, EDDM uses a generic permit and the phrase “Local Postal Customer” where an address would normally appear. And instead of needing to purchase a mailing permit, you can use a generic permit.
The goal with both changes was to remove friction and make it easier and more convenient to execute a local direct mail marketing campaign. For a small business doing this on their own, that convenience can feel attractive. But convenience comes with consequences.
The Tradeoff Many Businesses Miss
For the trades, EDDM comes with one rule that matters more than anything else.
With the EDDM program, you must mail to every single residential address in each carrier route. There are no exceptions. This means you cannot remove apartments and renters, and you cannot remove your current customers. For most trade businesses, that is where EDDM stops making sense.
Why This Is a Problem for Trade Businesses
Your trades business does not sell to everyone. You sell to homeowners, specifically homeowners who own their property.
Renters will never buy from you and will typically contact their landlord for repairs. So, when you mail to renters, you are paying to reach people you will never convert, and it can kill your direct mail marketing response rate.
Equally important, your current customers should not be targeted with a new customer acquisition direct mail marketing piece. Your current customers should receive a different retention marketing piece that is more personalized. Acquisition and retention direct mail marketing are not the same campaign and not the same message.
That is the real problem with EDDM. It forces you to treat all those groups the same. That is not targeting. It is waste.
No Matchback Analysis
The most accurate way to track direct mail ROI is matchback analysis. That means comparing the addresses you mailed to against the new customers you acquired during the campaign and in the trailing months after the mailings drop.
This is often more accurate than call tracking alone. Not everyone calls the number printed on the mailer. Many people see the piece, then search you on Google, visit your website, or call the main number they find online. When that happens, you lose visibility if you rely only on call tracking.
The problem with EDDM is that you are not working from a true address level mailing file. Without that address level file, you cannot reliably complete a matchback analysis to measure ROI accurately.
EDDM Retail vs EDDM BMEU
To add to the confusion, there are two types of EDDM.
- EDDM Retail is when you take the mailers to the post office yourself. In addition, there are other requirements for your mailings such as required paperwork and the bundling of mailers. To learn more, read “Time Saving Tips for EDDM” after you finish this article.
- EDDM BMEU, or Business Mail Entry Unit, is when a third-party printer or mail company sends out your direct mail marketing using the EDDM method of not having a physical address on the mail piece.
A Smarter Alternative for the Trades
The solution is not to abandon targeting and mailing to carrier routes. The solution is to mail carrier routes the right way by working with a true direct mail marketing partner that understands your trades business and uses a physical address on every direct mail piece you send out.
Using a physical address does one critical thing.
It allows you to remove unwanted addresses such as apartments, trailers and also remove your current customers.
You keep the benefits of carrier route targeting, including the lowest postage rate and neighborhood precision, without being forced to mail to people who will never buy from you.
The Bottom Line
EDDM was designed to make mailing easier. But for companies in the trades that care about customer acquisition efficiency, easy and effective are not the same thing.
Carrier route direct mail works extremely well when it is executed with precision and with the right data choices behind it. That difference is where most contractors either win or quietly burn money.
To learn more about how Mail Shark can help you create the most impactful direct mail marketing campaigns while maximizing your budget and ROI, give us a call or contact us today.
The post Why EDDM for Contractors Usually Costs You Money appeared first on Mail Shark.
