Compare direct mail options on cost per signed job: what you pay per home mailed, divided by the share of homes that call and the share of those calls you close. Roofing direct mail cost per piece varies a lot (postage alone ranges from $0.26 for Every Door Direct Mail to between $0.62 and $0.71 for a presorted First-Class letter under the USPS price list effective July 12, 2026), but the cheapest piece is not automatically the cheapest way to sign a roof. This post gives you the formula, the current postage numbers, a simple break-even rule for a pricier mailer, and the cases where the cheap option really is the right one.
The formula: from cost per home to cost per job
Start with your all-in cost per home mailed. Then run two divisions you can do on your phone:
- Cost per call = cost per home ÷ response rate
- Cost per job = cost per call ÷ close rate
Say a mailer costs $0.45 per home all-in, 0.4% of homes call, and you close 20% of those calls. Cost per call is $0.45 ÷ 0.004 = $112.50. Cost per job is $112.50 ÷ 0.20 = $562.50. Put another way, every 1,000 homes cost you $450 and bring in 4 calls and 0.8 jobs.
The response and close rates in this post are example inputs so the math has something to work on. They are not benchmarks, and the guide to roofing direct mail response rates covers what published rates do and don't tell you. The rates that matter are the ones you measure on your own mail, which is what tracking calls, scans and signed jobs back to a mailing is for.
What postage costs as of October 2026
Postage is the line item you can look up. These are the per-piece prices from USPS Notice 123, in effect since July 12, 2026. Ranges for presorted mail run from the best sort level (5-Digit) to the worst (Mixed AADC); ask your mail house which level your list will qualify for.
| Option | Postage per piece | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| EDDM Retail | $0.260 | Every address on the routes you pick, no permit, 200 to 5,000 pieces per day per ZIP Code |
| EDDM BMEU | $0.259 | Same, paid with a bulk permit, no volume limit |
| Marketing Mail letter, automation | $0.395 to $0.467 | Addressed, presorted, minimum 200 pieces |
| First-Class postcard, automation | $0.453 to $0.495 | Addressed, presorted |
| First-Class letter, automation | $0.621 to $0.707 | Addressed, presorted |
| First-Class stamped letter | $0.82 | Single piece, no minimum |
EDDM details come from the USPS Every Door Direct Mail page. One Marketing Mail detail affects your list hygiene: according to USPS Business Mail 101, Marketing Mail pieces are not forwarded or returned unless you ask for it with an endorsement, which can add fees. So you won't learn about bad addresses unless you pay to.
What goes into cost per home
Postage is only one line. Add up everything the campaign costs, then divide by the homes you actually mailed:
- Postage, from the table above
- Printing, plus folding and inserting for letters, and any personalization (names, a photo of the house)
- The list or targeting work (zero for EDDM, since USPS delivers to every address on the route)
- Design and copy, and a license for any image you didn't take yourself
- Tracking phone numbers and QR code tools
- Your own or your office's time, or the fee if someone else runs it
Print prices swing with size, paper, run length and personalization, so get written quotes and convert each one to a price per home. A quote of $950 for 5,000 pieces is $0.19 per home before postage.
How much better does a pricier mailer have to do?
Here is the rule: divide the pricier option's cost per home by the cheaper option's. The result is how many times as many jobs per home mailed the pricier option has to produce just to tie on cost per job.
Take two example options. Option A is an EDDM card at $0.45 per home all-in ($0.26 postage plus $0.19 print). Option B is an addressed, personalized letter at an example $1.50 per home all-in. B costs 3.3 times as much per home ($1.50 ÷ $0.45), so it needs 3.3 times as many jobs per home to break even. With A at 0.8 jobs per 1,000 homes (from the example above), here is what B's cost per job looks like at different results:
| Example | A: EDDM card | B at 2x A's jobs per home | B at 3.3x (break-even) | B at 5x |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per 1,000 homes | $450 | $1,500 | $1,500 | $1,500 |
| Jobs per 1,000 homes | 0.8 | 1.6 | 2.67 | 4.0 |
| Cost per job | $562.50 | $937.50 | $562.50 | $375 |
Jobs per home is response rate times close rate, so a pricier piece can earn its price either way: more homes call, or more of the callers sign. A letter that only goes to homes that plausibly need a roof can win on close rate even if its response rate looks ordinary. It can also lose. The rule tells you what result you need before you spend, and your tracking tells you if you got it.
Budget changes the picture too. The same $4,500 reaches 10,000 homes with A and 3,000 homes with B. Before you pick, check that your area has 10,000 homes you'd actually want to mail. If it doesn't, the extra reach of the cheaper option goes to homes you'd rather skip.
Can the mail pay for itself?
Run a payback check next to cost per job. The 2025 Cost vs. Value report from the Journal of Light Construction puts the national average job cost of an asphalt shingle roof replacement at $31,871, for a 30-square tear-off with new underlayment and flashing. Your own average ticket is the better number. At an example gross margin of 25%, that job leaves about $7,970 of gross profit, so one signed roof covers a $4,500 drop with room to spare.
That changes the question. At drop sizes like this, a mailer that signs a single full replacement pays for itself, so "does mail work" is less useful than "which option signs the most jobs for this budget." That is why cost per job, or its flip side, jobs per $1,000 spent, is the number to compare.
Why one mailing can't settle the comparison
Roof jobs come in small numbers, and small numbers jump around. In the example, Option A signs 8 jobs on $4,500, which is $562.50 per job. Two fewer jobs and it's $750 per job; two more and it's $450. A swing of a couple of jobs can happen by chance alone, with the same mailer to similar homes.
So don't drop an option after one mailing that came in a job or two short. Compare totals across several drops, or across a larger mailing, before you decide. If you split a mailing to test two options, give each one comparable homes, not the best routes to one and the leftovers to the other.
When EDDM is the right choice
The cheapest piece wins when most homes on a route are real prospects, because then targeting has little to filter out. That can be true right after hail that hit whole neighborhoods, when nearly every roof on the route deserves an inspection. It's also a fair choice for putting your name in front of the neighbors around jobs you already have going, where you care more about being recognized than about tracked calls. And it's the right choice whenever your own tracked numbers show it signs jobs for less.
Know the limits before you pick it. USPS delivers EDDM to every address on the route, addressed to "Postal Customer," so there are no names and no personalization. The USPS tool lets you filter routes by age, household size and income; ownership is not among the filters USPS lists. Nationally, the Census Bureau put the homeownership rate at 65.0% in the second quarter of 2026, so on an average route roughly a third of households rent, and it varies a lot from route to route. And since EDDM works without an address list, matching signed jobs back to the mailing only works at the route or ZIP Code level, unless you build the route's address list yourself.
If you want to check where hail fell before picking routes, NOAA's Storm Events Database lists hail by date and county. As of October 2026 it runs through May 2026, so use it to plan around past seasons, not last week's storm.
Where Scoutbound fits
Scoutbound is a done-for-you direct mail service for roofers that puts its effort into which homes get mail. It analyzes aerial images of homes in ZIP Codes chosen with you, selects homes whose roofs show visible wear, and mails each homeowner a personalized letter with an aerial image of their own roof, under your brand. Postage and printing are included in the price. Each letter carries its own QR code that leads to your website and a tracking phone number, and calls, texts and scans show up in your online portal, so you can measure jobs per home mailed and run the comparison above on your own numbers.