Direct mail basics

Direct Mail 101: every way to put a mailer in a mailbox

There are three ways to get a printed piece into the hands of the people you want to reach. Here is how each one works, which one fits your job, and what each costs and takes, with our own prices.

Published Sat, Oct 17, 2026 · Updated Fri, Oct 23, 2026

• EDDM
• Mailing lists
• Voter lists
• Saturation mail
• Postage
• Costs
• Timelines

If you have never mailed anything in bulk, start here. There are three ways to put a printed piece in front of the homes you care about, and they differ in who gets it, what it costs and how long it takes.

The three ways, in one table

The minimums come from the Postal Service's own rules: EDDM Retail takes "200 or more pieces" and up to 5,000 per day per ZIP Code (DMM 143.2.5), and addressed Marketing Mail starts at "200 or more pieces" too (DMM 243.3.1.2).

Way one: Every Door Direct Mail

EDDM is a USPS program that delivers your mailer to every address on the carrier routes you choose. You never buy a list and you never print a name. The piece is addressed to "Postal Customer" and the carrier leaves one in every box on the route.

That makes EDDM a low-cost way to reach a whole neighborhood. The retail postage is 26¢ a piece (USPS EDDM Retail rate, effective July 12, 2026, per the USPS Notice 123 price list), and you pay it at the counter with no permit.

EDDM wins when the whole neighborhood is your audience:

• a city council or school board district that is mostly homes
• a ballot question or bond issue that every household in the city votes on
• a first piece that builds name recognition before you know who your best prospects are

What you give up is choice. You can pick routes, and you can choose residential addresses only, but you buy each route whole. The what is EDDM guide covers the rules, and how to pick EDDM routes shows how to choose them.

Way two: addressed mail to a list

Here you start with a list of addresses and mail only those. The list can carry names ("Jane Doe") or use an occupant line such as "Current Resident", which USPS allows on most mail (DMM 602.3.4). A list addressed to "Resident" at every address on a route is called a saturation or occupant list.

A list wins when precision matters more than reach:

• You want certain people. Registered voters in one party, homeowners, people who already bought from you.
• You want exact boundaries. A city race whose line cuts through the middle of a postal route.
• You want a name on the piece. A letter to a person reads differently from a postcard to the box.

Where lists come from surprises people: the Postal Service "does not sell address lists" (USPS Business Mail 101). Lists come from data companies, from public records, or from you. For a campaign, the best list is the voter file from your county elections office, and our voter list mail service can request it for you.

Vendor list prices, as published on October 7, 2026: an occupant list (addresses with no names) from about $9.50 per thousand at Melissa or $12 per thousand at Click2Mail, and a consumer list with names from $33.66 per thousand at Click2Mail. For 5,000 records that works out to roughly $47.50 to $60 for occupant data and about $168 for names at Click2Mail. Those are the vendors' own figures and they change without notice.

Addressed mail costs more to send than EDDM. With our list mail, postage is billed at the actual USPS rate after presort, usually 29¢–40¢ per piece, depending on how densely your list sorts.

Way three: handouts

A handout skips the post office. You print postcards, palm cards or door hangers, they ship to you, and volunteers or staff hand them out at doors, events and storefronts.

Handouts win when a person is already there to deliver them: a canvass, a festival booth, a candidate forum, a counter at the shop. They cost nothing to deliver.

The trade is reach. A handout goes only as far as your volunteers walk. Our guide to palm cards and door hangers covers what to print for a canvass.

What 5,000 pieces costs each way

Here is one job priced three ways with our own published prices: 5,000 pieces, full color both sides.

For EDDM, print and prep covers printing, bundling, mail prep, route slips and USPS drop-off, and postage is 26¢ a piece. For list mail it covers printing, list cleanup, addressing and presort, and postage is 29¢ to 40¢ a piece. The handouts ship to you free by ground.

Two things the table does not show. EDDM postage is billed on the deliveries on your routes, so a 5,000-piece run can mail fewer than 5,000. And the list price above does not include buying a list: for a voter list that is your county's fee, and for a commercial list it is the per-thousand price above.

The handout line looks cheapest because the delivery cost is your volunteers' time. If you have the people, use it. If you don't, the mail lines are what delivery costs when the Postal Service does the walking.

How long each one takes

Every window below starts on the day your artwork is approved and counts business days, which skip weekends and federal holidays.

• Postcards to hand out: 1 to 2 business days to print, then 1 to 3 in ground shipping, so in your hands in 2 to 5.
• EDDM: about 7 business days from approval to mailboxes, covering printing, bundling, paperwork, the drop at the post office and carrier delivery. We plan on 9 to leave a cushion.
• List mail: 1 to 3 business days to clean and sort the list, then about 7 to 10 to print, address and deliver.

We show a window because USPS does not promise a date. Its published standard for Marketing Mail is 4 to 7 days end to end, and 2 days for mail paying a delivery-unit rate, the closest published standard for EDDM Retail (39 CFR 121.3). The same rules say this mail "may receive deferred handling" and USPS "does not guarantee the delivery" in a set time (DMM 243.3.1.1). The EDDM timeline guide walks through the math, and our order timeline counts it for your date.

The waste question

People ask which way wastes less. The honest answer is that each wastes something different.

EDDM sends a piece to every door on the route, including homes that will never vote for you or buy from you. You accept that in exchange for low postage and no list to buy.

A list sends only to the addresses you choose, so every piece goes to someone you picked. You pay for that with higher postage, a list to buy or request, and a few more days of cleanup.

So the useful number is cost per person you actually want to reach. Count how many of the homes on your routes are your audience, divide each total in the table above by that count, and compare.

Or let us do it

You can do every part of this yourself. If you would rather hand it off, we print, prepare and deliver EDDM mailers to the post office, clean and mail lists, and ship handouts to your door. See EDDM pricing and postcards side by side, or send us your date and we'll map your timeline.

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