Shared Mail vs EDDM: Which Should a Small Business Use?

EDDM, or Every Door Direct Mail, is the United States Postal Service program that lets a business mail its own piece to every address on the carrier routes it picks, without a mailing list or a permit. Shared mail, in the sense used here, is a spot on a 9x12 postcard that several non-competing local businesses split, one per category, with design, printing and postage in the price. EDDM gives you the whole piece and full control of it; a shared card gives you part of a piece at a fraction of the cost per home.

Which one a small business should use comes down to how much of the card it needs and how exact its timing has to be. We sell one of these two things, so the shared column below is a claim you are entitled to check, and the EDDM column gives EDDM the rows it wins.

What is the difference between shared mail and EDDM?

The difference is who owns the piece of mail. With EDDM you design, print and deliver a card of your own to the post office, and every square inch of it is yours; with a shared card you buy a spot on a piece that a mailing company designs, prints and posts on behalf of everyone on it.

That one difference explains most of the others. Owning the piece means you pay for the whole piece, choose exactly which routes it goes to and exactly when, and carry the bundling and the paperwork. Sharing the piece means the biggest costs are divided several ways, and in exchange you accept the card’s zone, the card’s date and a portion of its space.

How do they compare?

The EDDM figures are the ones published in what EDDM actually costs, which walks through every line. The shared figures are read from the rate sheet as this page loads.

When EDDM is the right answer

EDDM is the right answer when the message needs a whole card, the timing has to be exact, or the homes you want are not in a zone a shared card reaches. Those cases are real, and no cost advantage changes them.

• You need the whole card. A grand opening, a full menu, a before-and-after gallery for a remodeler, a multi-part offer. If a spot cannot carry the message, the cheaper spot is not cheaper.
• Your timing is exact.A roofer mailing the week after a storm, a tax preparer in the first days of February, a pool company the week the weather turns. A shared card mails on its zone’s schedule, and the schedule does not know about the storm.
• Your routes are specific. The homes you want are four carrier routes on one side of Dorchester Road, not a whole ZIP code. EDDM lets you buy exactly those.
• Your area is not on the calendar. If your customers are outside the zones on offer, a shared card cannot reach them at any price.
• You want to be the only business in the mailbox that day. A shared card carries other local businesses, none of them your competitors, but still other names. Some businesses would rather own the moment, and are comfortable paying for it.
• The budget is comfortable at a few thousand dollars a drop. At that level the per-home saving matters less than control, and a business that can fill a whole card should probably have one.

When a shared card is the right answer

A shared card is the right answer when the job is to be seen by a neighborhood repeatedly at a cost that makes repetition affordable, and when the business does not have a designer, a print buyer and a free day to spare. That describes most local businesses running their first direct mail.

• You are testing whether mail works for you at all. A spot at $249 is a test you can afford to have fail. A solo run at several times that is a bet.
• You want the same homes more than once. The card that gets the call is usually the second or third one a household has seen. At today's prices, three small spots on one zone's card cost less than a single EDDM drop at the bottom of its range; at EDDM prices, three drops is a serious budget.
• A spot is enough to say it. A name, an offer, a number and a reason to keep the card fits comfortably in a 4×6 inch spot, and for a dentist, a lawn service or a pressure-washing company that is the whole message.
• You do not want the logistics. No printer to brief, no bundles to count, no facing slips, no trip to the post office in Moncks Corner because that is the one that serves your routes.
• Category exclusivity is worth something to you. One business per category means the card cannot carry a competitor. EDDM offers no such thing; the mailbox that day may hold two roofers.
• Your customers are a place, and the zone matches it. Summerville, Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, Goose Creek: if your service area sits inside a zone on the mailing calendar, the coarser targeting costs you nothing.

Can a business use both?

Yes, and the order that usually works is shared first, EDDM later. A shared spot answers the cheap question, which is whether an offer to this neighborhood moves anybody; a solo card answers the expensive one, which is whether a whole piece of your own does better. Running the expensive test before the cheap one is how a first campaign turns into a last one.

The other combination is a solo piece for the moment that needs it, such as an opening or a seasonal push, and a spot on the zone’s card the rest of the year to stay familiar between those moments. Give each its own way in, a different offer code or landing page, so you can tell which one the customer came through.

Neither is the only option. Coupon envelopes, addressed mail to a purchased list and the national online printers all sit somewhere on the same spectrum of control against cost, and Charleston direct mail companies compared weighs all of them. For how the shared card itself works, from zones to artwork deadlines, start with the direct mail overview.