The cheapest way to mail roofing postcards without a permit is the Postal Service’s Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), at $0.26 a card in postage with no mailing list needed. It puts a card in every mailbox on the carrier routes you pick. Mailing only the houses around a job, or only homeowners, takes an addressed list, which costs more to mail and has to be bought or built.
For response rates, the number worth planning around is the one you count off your own cards, on a phone number printed nowhere else. For how postcards compare with yard signs and door hangers, see Yard Signs, Door Hangers and Postcards: What Offline Roofing Marketing Still Works.
As of October 2026, postage runs about 26 to 65 cents a card
These are postage prices alone for a 5,000-card mailing, from USPS Notice 123. USPS revises them, so check the notice before you budget.
| How it mails | What it needs | Postage per card | 5,000 cards |
|---|---|---|---|
| EDDM Retail | No list or permit; an oversized card; 200 to 5,000 cards a day per ZIP Code | $0.260 | $1,300 |
| USPS Marketing Mail, addressed | A list, presorted to the ZIP Code | $0.395 | $1,975 |
| First-Class postcard, presorted | A list, presorted to the ZIP Code | $0.453 | $2,265 |
| First-Class postcard, stamped | A list; a card no bigger than 6 by 4-1/4 inches | $0.65 | $3,250 |
The two presorted prices assume your list has enough cards in each ZIP Code to sort that finely. A list scattered across a metro sorts more coarsely and costs more: $0.467 a card for automated Marketing Mail at the least-sorted level, and about $0.50 for First-Class.
EDDM also has a bulk version, dropped off through a business mail entry unit, that USPS advertises at as low as $0.259 a card. It takes a bulk permit and presort paperwork, with the cards dropped at the delivering post office, so on a small run EDDM Retail costs about the same.
Notice 123 lists a $390 annual Marketing Mail fee and a $390 fee to apply for a permit imprint. Ask the business mail entry unit which of them your mailing needs before you add up the first year.
Every price here is postage only. Price the mailing at the sort level your list will reach, then add the printer’s quote for design and printing, plus any list you buy.
EDDM suits a subdivision of same-age roofs and needs an oversized card
The USPS online tool picks carrier routes by how many homes are on them and by Census figures for age, household size and income. It has no way to pick individual addresses. A route averaged about 721 addresses in fiscal 2025, going by USPS’s delivery totals, so check the tool for the count on the routes you want.
The card has to mail as a flat, which means longer than 11-1/2 inches or taller than 6-1/8 inches. A 6 by 9 card doesn’t qualify, so tell the printer the card is for EDDM before you order.
Whole routes suit a subdivision where the roofs went on around the same time, and Picking Neighborhoods to Canvass With Roof Age and Permit Data covers finding those streets. Some routes are already crowded: a Florida contractor with about 13 years in roofing says homeowners in his market have had fifty people knock, flyers every other day and mail every week. Pick routes where the roofs are due and the mailboxes aren’t already full of roofing cards.
Lists you build from your own jobs cost nothing to buy
A New York roofing contractor on r/marketing went looking for a company to “mail postcards to neighbors (25-500 neighbors) before, during, or right after” a job. EDDM can’t do that, because its smallest unit is a whole route. At the small end you can do it yourself: note the addresses on the street while the crew is there and mail stamped postcards, which come to $16.25 in postage for 25 neighbors.
A roofer on r/RoofingSales builds his list from the demographics he wants around his recent jobs and mails a “while we’re in your area 5% off a complete job” offer.
An addressed list can also pick houses by roof material. A Nebraska roofer on r/RoofingSales pairs canvassing with mailers warning wood-shake owners about insurer changes, which he says give them a year to replace the roof before they are dropped. He reports very good success and conversations homeowners welcome.
A bought list adds a cost EDDM doesn’t have, so set the vendor’s quote beside the postage in the table before you compare. Start with the lists you already hold: the neighbors of this month’s jobs and the doors your canvassers knocked with no answer.
A 2021 survey found postcards paid best to your own customers, letters to strangers
The Association of National Advertisers’ 2021 Response Rate Report surveyed marketers in every industry, and its public summary reports return on investment by mail format. Mailed to people who already knew the business, postcards returned 92% on the money spent, more than any other mail format. Mailed to people who didn’t, letter-sized envelopes returned 112%, the highest of any format in the survey.
A roofing sales rep on r/RoofingSales described an experiment along those lines. He mailed printed letters in envelopes, with real stamps and handwritten addresses, to doors he had knocked with no answer whose roofs looked aged or damaged, and hoped curiosity would get them opened.
For a roofer, the people who already know the business are past customers and homeowners partway through a claim. Someone in a roofing Facebook group asked what others mail to customers who have signed a contingency agreement, which is mail to exactly that second group.
Send postcards to past customers and test a letter on cold houses, each on its own tracking number.
Count your response on a tracking number for each mailing
A poster on r/RoofingSales, asking whether postcards work or are mostly a waste, wrote: “I’ve read somewhere that they have a decent conversion rate of about 3%.” He didn’t say where.
An owner on r/Roofing who spends over $15,000 a month across direct mail, SEO, social media and other lead sources puts every source on its own phone number. That tells him how many leads each source brings in and what each lead cost.
Give each mailing its own tracking number the same way, and each list its own number if you’re comparing lists. If the card carries a QR code, tag its link with utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, the tags Google Analytics says to use together. That counts scans and misses calls. Then count the signed jobs from each number and divide the mailing’s postage, printing, design and list cost by them. How to Track Which Marketing Brings In Your Roofing Jobs covers setting that cost beside your other lead sources.
Shared coupon mailers need the same test. A New Jersey roofing and chimney business whose only advertising was Money Mailer called it very expensive and said it had brought in next to nothing in recent months. Put a tracking number on that ad too, and drop it if the number stays quiet.
Texas, Florida, California and federal law each limit what a postcard can do
Under Texas Business and Commerce Code 27.02, advertising or promising to pay, waive, absorb or rebate a homeowner’s insurance deductible without the insurer’s consent is a Class B misdemeanor. Keep “we pay your deductible” off a Texas card.
Florida Statute 489.119 requires a contractor’s registration or certification number on every advertisement in any medium, and California’s Business and Professions Code 7030.5 requires the license number in all advertising. In any other state, read the licensing board’s advertising rules before the card goes to the printer.
Federal law (18 U.S.C. 1725) makes it an offense to knowingly put unstamped mailable matter, such as circulars, in a mailbox to avoid postage. If you hand out cards on foot, keep them out of the mailbox.
Run this list before the cards go to print
- Pick the houses first: whole routes through EDDM, or an addressed list of job neighbors, past customers, unanswered doors or one roof type.
- Size the card for how it mails, oversized for EDDM and postcard-sized for stamps.
- Put a tracking number on every mailing, and tag the link behind any QR code.
- Check the offer and the license number against your state’s rules.
- Count signed jobs per mailing before you mail the same houses again.
Before you pick routes, see where homeowners searching Google Maps already find you, so the mail can cover the areas where they don’t. Run the free Google Maps heatmap: pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.