What is the Average Response Rate for EDDM? | Taradel

EDDM, or Every Door Direct Mail, is a tried-and-true method of creating meaningful connections with your community. It offers a hassle-free, affordable way of reaching new customers and engaging existing ones on the designated mailing route.

This excellent marketing tool's benefits are easy targeting, cost-effectiveness, and no need for purchased mailing lists. Every Door Direct Mail makes it easy to reach the right people and keep your business afloat.

If you are interested in trying direct mail, you might have a question: "What is the average response rate for EDDM?" As it's crucial to your initial expectations and planning, let's make everything clear.

What Is the Average Response Rate for EDDM?

According to direct mail statistics, the average response rates for direct mail are 0.5 to 2 percent, meaning that in a marketing campaign with 200 mail pieces, 1 to 4 people might respond to your advertising. 

However, such an approximation is valid only for particular situations and applications. It will vary depending on the nature of your business and how you sell it. The response rates may grow or even decrease depending on the number of times a person has been exposed to your brand. Before trying to predict your response rates, it's necessary to set сlear goals for your marketing campaigns and understand how effective they are.

A 2% response rate is feasible when:

  • You are using a free offer that doesn't require much commitment from your target audience. (No one could resist taking advantage of free offers. The concept is extremely straightforward. You create and offer a free report to your target audience. Those individuals who are interested in the topic will respond. Since the offers are free, you can expect more people to react. Thus you can get more potential customers. 
  • You're targeting new customers from an outside mailing list who are not actively looking for your service offerings. Since there is no relationship between you and the individuals from outside mailing lists, getting a reaction from them may be difficult.

Bear in mind that 0.5 to 2 percent is just the universal average response rate for EDDM. With proper branding and a strong marketing message, you will be able to get more responses.

How to Measure the Average EDDM Response Rate?

The response rate is the most popular and most common way of measuring the results of a direct mail campaign. It helps to reflect the percentage of people who reply to your mailing.

The process of measuring the average response rate for EDDM is easy.

In order to determine it, you just need to count up the number of responses the mailing generates and then divide them by the number of mailers delivered.

For instance:

For an EDDM campaign with 6,000 mailer deliveries, your response tracking tools include phone calls and website visits.

Here is the amount of responses received:

Calls – 445

Website visits – 155

Total amount – 600

Let's have a look at the response rate for this EDDM initiative:

Number of Mailers Delivered/Number of Responses = Response Rate

6000/600 = 10 percent

Thus, we get 10%. This is the response rate for the specified campaign.

How to Garner More Response Rates for EDDM?

The appearance of EDDM gave direct mail marketing a boost in the right direction. With direct mail, one can increase sales, reach new customers, improve the brand recognition of the company or launch new products. 

Even if you’ve already seen positive direct male response rates using the most up-to-date techniques, there’s always room for improvement in direct mail campaigns. Check out the tips below on how to make the most of your direct mail marketing campaign and garner a better response rate.

Choose the Right Design

Design plays a crucial role in your direct marketing campaign. It’s vital that individuals can recognize which envelope is yours and which isn’t. Customers would love to receive direct mail pieces from their preferred brands, so they won’t waste time checking every envelope that comes through their door. 

The tip is pretty simple here: customize the outside of your mailer by choosing a flashy envelope and putting a recognizable mark. It will help you improve your brand recognition and boost your open rates.

Create a Comprehensible and Tempting Offer

Avoid blowing up your target audience's mailboxes with spam mailers. Offer value if you want to improve direct mail response rates.

You should include an offer in every piece of mail you send out. There must be something captivating that will make an individual fill out a coupon and send it back to you in the post. Offer them an advertising mail they couldn't refuse: something relevant, compelling, and beneficial to their lives. 

Also, don't make your potential customers go through extra hoops to get the goodies. Include a straightforward coupon that they could complete and send back to you.

Make Sense of Urgency

Making sense of urgency has always been a successful tactic in marketing. By setting a deadline, you encourage immediate action instead of putting things off.

It’s a win-win tacting in direct mail as well. Very often, individuals may just open a letter, like what you say, and then tell themselves that they’ll reply later. Eventually, something distracts them, and they fail to remember what they planned to do with your mailer. 

A sense of urgency reminds your customers that they have limited time to reply to your offer, or they’ll miss the chance. Thus you create a chance to increase your direct mail response rate.

Target Your Audience Properly

Choosing the right audience to target is a key component of any effective direct mail push. Sending out hundreds of letters to individuals who have no prospect of purchasing from you is not something you want to do. It's just cash flushed down the drain.

With direct mail advertising, it may be a daunting task to determine who you should send mailers to, as you can't just do it with the click of a button, as in social media. 

You should create a successful sales prospecting list to target your audience properly. It will save your team time, lower your customer acquisition cost, and help build better client relationships for improved customer lifetime value.

First of all, reach the best understanding of what you are selling. Then determine which prospects are best to target: build a buyer persona. After that, create a contact list spreadsheet, and collect and update your data. Finally, analyze and categorize the leads you've collected, and add the most relevant ones to your sales prospecting list.

The Bottom Line

To sum up, the response rate reflects the percentage of people who respond to a mailer. To determine it, you just need to count up the number of responses the mailing generates, then divide it by the amount mailed. 

The average return for EDDM is 0.5% to 2%, but it may vary depending on the nature of your business, company budget, marketing goal, and other factors. 

If you want to garner a better response rate, you should follow the tips above. They will help you boost sales, get new customers, improve your company's brand recognition and launch new products without spending a fortune.

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