Every Door Direct Mail direct mail is where you select whole carrier routes and the USPS delivers a single piece to every address (door) in the postal carrier route. One issue is that the USPS provides the number of household and businesses in each route for which the mail will need to be prepared, but these counts are often not 100% accurate.

Many times we see that these counts are inaccurate and either people on the route do not receive the mail piece or what is more often the case there are leftover materials that are recycled. The issue with this is that you are paying postage and printing for these leftovers that never get to their intended recipient. There is also no address or barcode so the delivery is based on the postal carrier issuing one piece to everyone on their route and there is no way to know way to verify which addresses did or did not receive the mail piece.

The inaccuracies in the Every Door Direct Mail EDDM counts are normally a result of vacancies, no mail receptacles, and multiple addresses with one mail receptacle (that typically get one mail piece but are counted as multiple). One way to try to get better counts is to use data from data compilers. The USPS sends the address data to compilers who then scrub the data and remove vacancies and multiple address destinations. This is still not 100% accurate but errs on the side of reducing the waste of printed materials and postage.

Another option would be to address every piece to ensure that is delivered to an address. This would use the same counts from compilers but there would be a physical address printed on the piece with a barcode. This will help increase the probability that the piece will be delivered and reduce the waste. There are added costs to addressing a mail piece, as a list is required and the address needs to be printed on each piece, but many times these costs are offset in savings from reducing waste. There are also postal and print savings associated with the classification of these mail pieces if they are addressed.

EDDM does reduce many costs but depending on your campaign it may not be the best suited and you may not be getting pieces delivered to the entire area you are targeting or you may be paying for additional postage and printing that is being wasted.