How we used a little-known (and very cheap) direct mail technique called EDDM to launch a new local service business overnight - a thread.

Earlier this year we wanted to start offering wood window restoration to the public, instead of just our property management clients. We built out a small workshop in the basement of our office and were ready for customers. But how to advertise?

EDDM stands for "Every Door Direct Mail". Normally if you want to use direct mail to advertise, you need a list of customers and their addresses. But EDDM (which is a relatively new offering from USPS) allows you to target specific neighborhoods for CHEAP.

You basically select mail routes (which are much more fine-grained than zip codes) that you want to advertise to, and pick if you want delivery to homes, businesses, or both. That's it! Every customer on that route gets your mail piece. Did I mention it's friggin cheap?

So here's what it looks like. We wanted to target older homes in historic districts that we knew required maintaining the existing older windows. They likely needed repairs. We picked 'German Village' and were able to pick 4 mail routes that almost exactly matched what we wanted.

We had a really quick 'n dirty 6x9 full color both sides postcard designed on Fiverr for, no joke, $35.

And blasted it out twice over the course of three weeks. Results? About 10 inquiries regarding our services. Half of them hired us (each job is pretty big). Boom, we're in business!