Direct mail for contractors: EDDM, postcards and tracking

Direct mail for contractors works when every drop has a reason: a list of homes you chose for something you know about them, a phone number that only that mailer uses, and a week on the board with room for the calls. Without those three, a postcard is a guess you pay postage on. This hub covers the two kinds of mail a trade business actually sends (Every Door Direct Mail and addressed postcards), how to build the lists from your service history and ZIP codes, and how to track each drop to booked and completed jobs.

EDDM or addressed: the decision table

The first decision on every drop is whether you're mailing a neighborhood or a list. USPS's Every Door Direct Mail delivers to every address on the carrier routes you pick, addressed to "Postal Customer", with no names or mailing list needed. EDDM Retail is $0.26 per piece for flats up to 3.3 ounces, with a 200-piece minimum and up to 5,000 pieces per ZIP Code per day.¹ The same $0.260 rate appears in USPS Price List Notice 123, effective October 4, 2026.² Addressed mail costs more per piece but reaches only the homes you've picked.

Our Field Notes post on whether direct mail still works runs the break-even math for each kind and shows how to test with a holdout group. This hub stays on the operating side: lists, tracking and timing.

Build the list before you design the card

Design is the fun part, so it's where most shops start. Start with the list instead. Every addressed drop should come from a filter you can write down and rerun: equipment install year, estimate status, membership end date, last completed job date, ZIP code.

ZIP codes deserve a second look. Pull completed revenue by ZIP for the last 12 months, divided by the number of households you've served there, and you may find a handful of ZIPs where your jobs are larger or more frequent. Those are your EDDM candidates for new-customer drops, because the homes resemble the ones that already pay you. The EDDM guide for contractors shows how to score individual carrier routes the same way.

Give every drop a tracking line

A coupon code counts the people who bothered to mention it. A tracking phone number counts every caller, and if the number belongs to a campaign, every job booked from those calls carries the campaign too. Use one number per drop (or per list, if one drop goes to two lists), print a short web address or QR code that lands on a booking page tagged with the same campaign, and don't reuse either on anything else.

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Time the drop to the schedule

Mail lands over several days and the calls trail for weeks. Plan the drop for the week your board starts to thin, not the week it's already empty. Look four to six weeks ahead at open technician hours, find the soft stretch, and mail so the first pieces arrive just before it. In a full week, the calls go to voicemail and the callers go elsewhere.

How to measure a mail drop from your jobs

Measure each drop 60 to 90 days after it lands, longer for replacement offers. All three numbers come from the tracking line and the job records, not from the printer's invoice alone.

Write all three next to the drop date and the list filter in one place. After three or four drops you'll know which lists and pieces earn, which is worth more than any industry response-rate average. For how cost per job compares with cost per lead, see the glossary entry on customer acquisition cost.

Mail sits alongside your other channels, and the same list can often go out by email first at almost no cost; see email marketing for contractors. If TradesForce or an agency plans your marketing calendar, the drop dates, lists and tracking lines above are the details they need from you.