What we found
- Printing and shipping one postcard to all 146.8 million housing units in the country comes to $17.3 million, an average of 11.8 cents per home.
- In 2,581 of the 3,144 counties, the cost stays under 20 cents a home. The largest counties get close to the floor of 11.1 cents, the price of whole 10,000-card runs plus shipping.
- 22 counties cost more than a dollar per home. Loving County, Texas has 35 housing units, so its cards work out to $13.54 each.
- By state, District of Columbia is the cheapest per home and South Dakota the most expensive at 16.3 cents, since many of its counties have only a few thousand homes.
- In 1,358 counties, a single run of 10,000 cards or fewer covers every home.
Why small counties pay more per home
Printing gets cheaper with volume. Our 6.5″ × 9″ EDDM card is $889 for 10,000, under nine cents a card, but the smallest run is 2,500 for $379. A county with a few hundred homes still buys that run, so most of the cards are spares.
That is not a reason to skip direct mail in a small market. It means the smart move is to share a run: mail the neighboring county too, hold a second drop for later in the season, or hand the extras out at your counter.
How to read your county's number
The finder shows the cost of mailing every home in a county as one order. Few businesses need that. A plumber or a pizza shop usually picks the routes within a short drive, which is a fraction of the county.
Treat the county figure as a ceiling for your area, then price the routes you plan to mail in the EDDM cost calculator. If you want to know whether the mailing will pay back, run the result through the break-even calculator.
How we built the numbers
Housing units come from the Census Bureau's county estimates for July 1, 2024, the newest county counts available. The county totals add up exactly to the national figure.
For each county, our pricing engine picked the cheapest mix of print runs that covers every housing unit, using the same code as checkout. Shipping was priced from the nearest of our six hubs to the county's internal point from the Census Gazetteer, at the standard wholesale rate.
What this study does not measure
Postage is left out, because USPS sets the EDDM Retail rate and changes it. Design is left out too, along with any bundling service.
Housing units include empty homes and seasonal cabins, while the USPS route counts that EDDM uses list active delivery points, so real route totals run a little different. Puerto Rico and the other territories are not part of the county file, and prices are as of the date at the top of this page.
Use this data
You are welcome to quote these figures or publish the CSV in an article, a class or a report. Please credit Save Huge On Direct Mail and link to this page.
Reporters who want a figure for one county or a different card size can call 512-573-1977. Corey runs the numbers the same day. For the card itself, see the 6.5″ × 9″ postcard and our EDDM printing page.
