Two very different strategies
There are two broad ways to decide who receives your postcard. Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) sends a piece to every address on the postal routes you select — you don't need a list of names. A targeted mailing reaches specific people you choose: your past customers, lapsed patients, new movers, or a purchased list filtered to a profile.
Neither is universally better. They suit different businesses and different goals.
When EDDM makes sense
EDDM shines when your customer is essentially "anyone in this area." A new restaurant, a grocery store, a grand opening, a car wash — businesses whose appeal is broad and local benefit from blanketing a neighborhood cheaply, without sourcing a list.
The tradeoffs: EDDM mails at slower Marketing Mail rates, has minimum size requirements (the 4x6 postcard doesn't qualify; 6x9 and 6x11 do), and — most importantly — you can't personalize or cleanly track who responded, because you never knew who got a card in the first place.
When a targeted list wins
A targeted list wins when you know who your customer is and want relevance and measurement. Recall reminders, reactivations, renewal nudges, win-backs — the bread and butter of local-service marketing — all depend on reaching specific people with a message meant for them.
Because you control the recipients, you can segment (overdue vs. recent vs. lost), personalize, and — critically — attribute responses to individuals. That's impossible with saturation mail.
A third option: build a list by neighborhood
There's a middle path that gives you saturation reach without sourcing a list yourself. In CardCadence you can build a mailing list straight from a geographic area: type one or more ZIP codes, or draw a radius, rectangle, or freehand shape on a map, and we fill in every mailable address inside it — addressed to the current resident. It's backed by the US National Address Database, 60M+ US addresses, so there's no list to buy and no CSV to wrangle.
Be clear-eyed about what this is: it's address-based occupant mail, not names or demographics. You're reaching the doors in an area, not specific people you've profiled. That makes it a great fit for local-saturation plays — a dental practice opening in a new part of town, an HVAC company before peak season, a med spa announcing a grand opening — where 'everyone on these streets' is exactly who you want. And because every card still carries a unique QR code, you can measure how the drop performed even though you didn't start with a list.
A simple decision rule
Ask one question: do you need to reach particular people, or just a lot of people nearby? If it's particular people — your patients, your customers, a defined profile — go targeted. If it's broad local awareness with no list and no need to track individuals, saturation (EDDM, or neighborhood mailing inside CardCadence) is a fine, cheap tool.
CardCadence does not offer EDDM, but it does cover both intents with addressed mail: upload your own list, or build one by neighborhood from a ZIP or a shape you draw on a map. Either way every card is addressed and mails First-Class, every design ships with a QR code that resolves to a per-recipient link, and any address USPS won't accept lands in your dashboard as an issue you can fix — so more cards reach a real mailbox and you can see what the drop brought back.