EDDM postcards for contractors: sizes, mail panel and USPS rules

Want it done for you? LeadHunter USA Postcards designs the card for your trade, lets you pick the neighborhoods on the USPS map, and prints and mails it: 1,000 postcards cost $670.76 with standard printing, postage included.

• You pick routes, not addresses. On the USPS EDDM page you choose carrier routes in a ZIP Code; the page says “your mail will be delivered to every address on your selected routes.” For each route, the USPS map lists the number of residential and total addresses, age, household size and income figures, and the postage.
• No names on the card. USPS: “Mailpieces are simply addressed to ‘Postal Customer’”, so you never buy or print a list.
• You print, bundle and drop off. With EDDM Retail you bring the cards to the post office that delivers those routes, in bundles of 50 to 100 pieces with an EDDM facing slip on top of each bundle. For routes far away, USPS says to send the mailing by Priority Mail to the Postmaster of that post office.

Sources: USPS, Every Door Direct Mail; DMM 143.2.5, read 27 October 2026

There are two ways in. A small contractor mailing a few routes near the shop usually starts with Retail; larger or repeated mailings usually go through a printer or mail house that enters them at a Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU).

Postage from USPS Notice 123, a time-limited price list in effect from 4 October 2026 to 17 January 2027. Check the current notice before you budget. Commercial EDDM prices go lower with USPS discounts, such as for delivery sort containers.

Sources: USPS Notice 123 (pages 5 and 18); USPS, Every Door Direct Mail; DMM 143.2.5, read 27 October 2026

The Domestic Mail Manual says EDDM-Retail flats “must weigh no more than 3.3 ounces and must have a length greater than 10-1/2 inches long, or a height greater than 6-1/8 inches high, or a thickness greater than 1/4 inch thick.” Meeting any one of the three is enough.

• Examples of sizes that qualify: 6.25 × 11 in, 6.5 × 9 in, 8.5 × 11 in. Each is taller than 6-1/8 inches.
• Why not 4x6: a postcard in USPS terms is no more than 4-1/4 inches high and 6 inches long. It is under all three EDDM-Retail minimums. Card-size pieces can go with a simplified address only to rural and highway contract routes and to PO boxes in offices without city carriers; to city routes, a 4x6 card needs an address on each piece.
• The upper limit for any flat is 15 inches long, 12 inches high and 3/4 inch thick.

Sources: DMM 143.2.5, DMM 101.2.1 and 101.6.2 and DMM 602.3.2.1, read 27 October 2026

Leave a clear area for USPS. On an EDDM Retail piece it carries the postage indicia and the address line. USPS: “Every EDDM mailpiece must include the EDDM Retail Indicia above and to the right of the address block.” It must be larger than 0.5 x 0.5 inch, in all caps, at least 4 point, and “should fit in the area 1.625" from the right edge and 1.375" from top edge.”

Sources: USPS, Every Door Direct Mail; DMM 602.3.2; USPS EDDM quick reference guide (2012), read 27 October 2026

USPS is direct about it: “The USPS does not guarantee the delivery of USPS Marketing Mail within a specified time.” What it does publish is a service standard: “USPS Marketing Mail pieces that qualify for a Destination Delivery Unit (DDU) rate have a 2-day service standard.” EDDM Retail is dropped off at the post office that delivers the routes.

How often the standard is met: in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, USPS reports that “National Destination Entry mail achieved 95.8 percent on time”, and “99.3 percent was delivered within the service standard plus three days.”

Sources: DMM 143.2.1; 39 CFR 121.3(b)(1); USPS Marketing Mail service performance, FY2026 Q3, read 27 October 2026

• EDDM: “Nearly 3 billion pieces were sent in fiscal year 2025” (USPS Postal Facts).
• All Marketing Mail: 56,756 million pieces in fiscal 2025, down 1.3% from the year before (USPS fiscal 2025 results).
• Homes reached: “In 2025, the Postal Service delivered to 157.8 million residential addresses.”

On whether people look at it: in the USPS Household Diary Study for fiscal 2013, the most recent edition we could open, “55 percent of households usually read their advertising mail, while an additional 21 percent scan their mail.” The answer for your area and trade is your own phone, which is why the cost guide works out how many jobs a mailing has to bring in.

Sources: USPS Postal Facts, marketing; USPS fiscal 2025 results; USPS Postal Facts, size and scope; USPS Household Diary Study FY2013, read 27 October 2026

• You want specific homes only (past customers, one street of a route, houses of a certain age). EDDM sends to the whole route; that needs addressed mail.
• You want a 4x6 card. It doesn’t qualify, as above.
• Your area is a few dozen homes. A Retail mailing starts at 200 pieces, unless the whole ZIP Code has fewer addresses.
• The card has a date on it that is less than a week away.

Next: what goes on the front and back is in what to put on a contractor postcard, and the full cost of a mailing, printing included, is in how much contractor postcards cost.