Every Door Direct Mail – Does it Work?
Author: Landen Green, DO
For those of you not familiar with EDDM, it sadly is not Electronic Dance Music (EDM) with double the Dance. Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is a service offered by the USPS and allows businesses to target specific neighborhoods and send promotional materials to every address in the area – many refer to this as “junk mail.” It’s relatively easy to and cheap compared to other marketing opportunities and the USPS EDDM system allows you to narrow down your target audience to age, household income, and a few other categories. But, does it work for DPC?
The saying “you’ve seen one DPC and you’ve seen one DPC” probably holds true here too. This is only my experience, “N of 1”, – so no promises on identical success. But, here are my thoughts and my experience with EDDM.
I used the service to send out 1,750 one page mailers in Jan of 2023 (month 3 for my DPC practice). I ordered the attached one-pager from Vista Print on higher quality paper. The thought was that even though people tend to just throw away the “junk mail,” if the paper quality was nicer they would at least look at it. I also went with a single page so it wasn’t something they would have to flip through to see (like magazines). The flyer was meant to target the “young” and “higher-income” earners in my area – so, convenience and access was highlighted more than affordability. Flyers could easily be customized to be more attractive to other zip codes.
Looking back now, two years later, this was a good investment. My total cost was about $1,200.
The day it went out, 50 people went to my website and about 50 more the next day (way more than normal). One family of five signed up that month and referenced the flyer. For me, that one family of 5 signing up was $550 the first month, then $350 per month following. So the advertisement was paid off after 3 months… and are all still members to this day. After two years of their membership, that’s about a $7,000 profit.
Three months after the flyers went out, I had two more adult members sign up listing the USPS EDDM flyer as why they joined. They are also still members today and would account for another $5,000 profit.
From those two families above who signed up from mailing the flyer, within the first year, they referred a total of 8 members to the practice that are also still members to this day, at least another $10,000 in profit.
It’s hard to determine a “lead source” for most patients because most of the time it is multifactorial. They will hear about your practice from the local Chamber, then see you on social media, then get a flyer in the mail, then hear about you from active patients and THEN sign up when they are sick. So, this flyer was just one of the things that helped me. A lot of times it’s not the “direct” result that helps but the combination of multiple efforts and the more ways you can make yourself visible the better.
Just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it works for everyone, of course. So, just like when we give a friend advice but not wanting to deal with the consequences if they follow it… I leave you with “but do what you think is best.” To increase your chances for success, be sure the flyer is highlighting what may be most important to the neighborhoods you are sending it to.
*IG handle is now CaravelHealthDPC. The question of using your name or your practice name is a great debate. As I grew, I decided my practice name would be best.
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Thank you for sharing.