EDDM & neighborhood mailing
What is EDDM?
EDDM is a USPS program that lets you mail a postcard to every address on the carrier routes you choose, without buying a mailing list. You pick neighborhoods; USPS delivers to every door on them. It is cheaper per piece than addressed mail because there are no names involved.
A carrier route is the round a single letter carrier walks or drives each day — typically a few hundred addresses. EDDM sells you the whole route rather than individual recipients, which is why it needs no list and why it costs less per piece.
USPS requirement
EDDM is a USPS Retail program with its own rules: simplified addressing, flat-size mailpieces only, a 200-piece minimum, and a limit of 5,000 pieces per ZIP Code per day.
The trade-off is targeting. You can choose an area and filter routes by household income, age and size, but you cannot choose individual households within a route, and you cannot address the piece to someone by name.