Best EDDM Postcard Sizes for Restaurants, Contractors, Real Estate, and Salons

This post is for the small business owner who knows they want to mail EDDM and just needs Morgan to point at the right size. Five postcard sizes qualify for EDDM Retail; the right one depends on what you're selling, how much you have to say, and whether you care more about cost-per-piece or response. Here's the short version, then the why.

Quick answer: which size for which business

Skim this table first. The rest of the post explains the reasoning so you can sanity-check the pick against your specific offer.

Business type	Recommended size	Why
Restaurant / food	6.5x9 or 8.5x11 (menu)	6.5x9 for offers; 8.5x11 when the menu IS the offer
Roofing / HVAC / contractor	6.5x11	Photos + price range fit; cost-efficient
Real estate (listings)	9x12	Photos read well; signals quality
Real estate (farming)	6.5x9	Cheap enough to mail monthly
Salon / personal services	6.5x9	Single offer, single image
Healthcare / dental	6.5x11	Room for trust signals + offer
Retail / grand opening	8.5x11 or 9x12	Impact matters more than CPM

Rule of thumb: If you're sending one offer, smaller wins on cost-per-piece. If you're sending a menu, listings, or multiple offers, bigger wins on response.

The five EDDM-eligible sizes (quick recap)

USPS only allows five postcard sizes for EDDM Retail: 6.5x9, 6.5x11, 8.5x11, 9x12, and 11x17 folded. Each clears the "flat" thresholds — every piece exceeds at least one of 11.5" long, 6.125" tall, or 0.25" thick. Anything smaller gets rejected and pushed into First-Class postage. For the full breakdown of why each size qualifies and the print and postage tradeoffs, see our EDDM postcard sizes deep dive.

Heads up: 4x6, 5x7, and standard 6x9 don't qualify for EDDM. They're too small to meet USPS flat thresholds. If you've designed one of these for another campaign, it can't be reused as-is. Bump up to 6.5x9 — same look, EDDM-eligible. The postcard sizes page shows the math.

Restaurants and food service: 6.5x9 or 8.5x11 menu format

Restaurants split down two paths. If you're sending one offer — a $5 lunch combo, a buy-one-get-one pizza, an opening week discount — the 6.5x9 wins. It's the cheapest EDDM-eligible size and a single bold offer doesn't need more real estate than that.

If you're sending the menu itself, jump to 8.5x11. The menu is the offer. Customers stick it to the fridge and order off it for weeks. This works especially well for pizza, Chinese, Thai, and any cuisine where people decide what they want before they decide where to order from. A 6.5x9 menu gets cramped fast. Spend the extra on 8.5x11 and let the food do the work.

Skip 9x12 for restaurants unless you're doing a true catalog format. Most restaurants get better return spending the difference on more mail volume.

Contractors (roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping): 6.5x11 with before/after photos

Contractors land on 6.5x11 more than any other format we quote. Contractor offers need three things on the page: a credibility shot (before/after photo, completed job, your truck), a clear price range or seasonal hook ("AC tune-up $89", "free roof inspection"), and contact info big enough to read from a kitchen counter. A 6.5x9 squeezes; a 9x12 costs more than the lift is worth; 6.5x11 fits all three with room to breathe.

The other reason: contractor campaigns tend to mail repeatedly to the same routes (spring AC tune-ups, fall heating service, post-storm roofing). The 6.5x11 keeps cost-per-piece reasonable enough to mail the same 5,000 homes three or four times a year without the math breaking down.

One exception: storm-chasing roofers hitting a freshly damaged neighborhood once want 9x12. The lift in attention is worth the cost when the window to land the job is two weeks.

Real estate: 9x12 for listings, 6.5x9 for general farming postcards

Real estate has two completely different EDDM use cases and they want different sizes.

Just-listed and just-sold postcards want 9x12. The whole point is the photo. A great kitchen shot at 8 inches wide stops the mail sort; the same shot at 4 inches wide gets thrown out. 9x12 also signals "this agent invests in their marketing," which is part of what farming mail is supposed to communicate. Yes, postage is the same, but the printed-piece cost is meaningfully higher than 6.5x9 — and for listing announcements, that's the right tradeoff.

General farming postcards (market updates, "thinking of selling?" touches, neighborhood activity recaps) want 6.5x9. Farming works through repetition. If you can mail the same 2,000 households once a month for a year, you build name recognition. If the format forces you down to quarterly because of cost, you lose half the effect. Use 6.5x9, keep frequency high, vary the message.

Salons and personal services: 6.5x9 with offer-driven design

Salons, barbers, lash studios, med spas, massage, personal training — all of these run best on a 6.5x9 with one strong offer and one image. The audience is local (most clients live within 3-5 miles), the offer is simple ("$30 off first cut", "free consultation"), and the budget per campaign is usually modest. The 6.5x9 fits all three constraints.

The temptation is to fill a bigger card with the full service menu. Resist it. Service menus belong on your website. The postcard's job is to get someone to call, book, or walk in once. One offer, one photo, one phone number.

If you're a high-end med spa targeting a premium ZIP, 8.5x11 with editorial-quality photography can work — the format itself becomes part of the brand signal.

Healthcare and dental: 6.5x11 with credibility-focused design

Dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors, urgent care, family medicine — all of these need room for credibility. New-patient offers ("$59 exam + x-rays") aren't compelling on their own; what closes the call is the doctor's photo, the credentials, a patient testimonial, and a friendly note about the practice. A 6.5x9 makes you choose; a 6.5x11 lets you keep all of it.

For practices trying to grow, 6.5x11 mailed quarterly to the same 5,000-10,000 nearby homes tends to outperform a single 9x12 mailed once. Healthcare is a slow decision — you want to show up in the mailbox more than once before someone has the emergency that makes them call.

Retail and grand openings: 8.5x11 or 9x12 for high impact

Retail stores, new locations, grand openings, anniversary sales — these are the campaigns where impact matters more than cost-per-piece. You get one shot to announce. A 6.5x9 gets sorted with the bills; a 9x12 gets looked at.

For a grand opening, 9x12 with a strong storefront photo, a clear offer ("20% off opening weekend"), a map, and store hours is the standard play. For an established store running a seasonal sale, 8.5x11 is the workhorse — big enough to show three or four featured products, small enough to hit a real radius.

This is also the category where 11x17 folded makes sense — true catalog-style retail with 12+ products on the inside spread.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just use whatever size I want and pay extra postage?

Not really. EDDM Retail has specific size rules. If your piece doesn't qualify, the post office rejects it as EDDM and you'd have to remail it as First-Class with individual addresses — which means buying a list, addressing every piece, and paying roughly twice the postage. Pick from the five eligible sizes.

Does a bigger postcard actually get a better response?

In our data, yes — usually 10-20% lift moving from 6.5x9 to 6.5x11 or 9x12. But response rate isn't the whole story. Cost-per-response is what matters. Sometimes the smaller card mailed to more homes beats the bigger card mailed to fewer.

What if I'm in an industry not on this list?

Default to 6.5x11. It's the most versatile EDDM size — enough room for an offer, a photo, and contact info, without the cost jump of 9x12. If your offer is dead simple (one line, one price), drop to 6.5x9. If you're showing off something visual (real estate, retail, a remodeled space), go up to 9x12.

Can I test multiple sizes against each other?

Yes, and it's a smart move if you're going to mail a lot. Pick two carrier routes with similar demographics, mail size A to one and size B to the other, and track responses by offer code or phone number. Two to three rounds gives you a real read.

Pick your size, then pick your routes

Once you've landed on a size, the next two decisions are artwork and routes. Our EDDM design guidelines cover bleed, safe zones, mailing panel, and PDF setup so your file doesn't come back with revisions. After that, the route selection guide walks through picking carrier routes by demographics, distance, and budget. The full reference lives on our EDDM size guidelines pillar.

When you're ready, head to our EDDM quote tool to map routes, pick your size, and see live pricing. Or call us at (713) 300-0687 and we'll talk through which size fits your offer in about ten minutes.