Selecting Your Audiences
When sending messages through Yodel, your audience list can consist of addresses and areas. Your sending locations allow Yodel to match receivers that live, work, or have other interests in messages intended for that location.
Understanding Sending Locations
You can add individual addresses to your list of sending locations. If you want to include specific single addresses, you can do so. Perhaps you have a list of known contacts, or you want to be able to include friends, family, or co-workers in your message send. This can be a great way to add additional addresses to quality check your message sends beyond the built-in support for your own primary address (such as your home address).
Area locations are the easiest way to create a batch of addresses to send messages to. Areas are simply geographic localities that you create by drawing on a map, which contain multiple addresses or allow Yodel to find overlapping areas of interest for receivers. Best of all, areas are just routes or shapes on a map. They do not save the included addresses themselves. Instead, at the time of sending a message out, Yodel will look for the current addresses within the area so that it is using the most up-to-date information we have at the point of mailing.
Naming Sending Locations
For addresses and areas, you can give them a name to help you identify them. You can use generic names for addresses like "Home" or specific names like "Blue Beach House on Route 1". For areas you could use names like "Our Neighborhood" or "Main Street Parade Route".
If you are sending messages as yourself, then these names will never be seen by anyone but you. However, location names are not completely private if you are using them for messages sent by a sending group. If you add your locations to a group-based message, then other members of the group will be able to see your location names too.
Selecting Sending Locations as an Audience
When you are creating a new message, the "Settings" tab allows you to select your audiences. This screen will allow you to see any active sending locations you have whether they are addresses or areas.
Your primary address (usually your home address), is also available to select as part of the audience. Your primary address is a no-cost address in your message send, and an ideal way to quality check the send and monitor its delivery time.
If your message is being sent from a group, then you may also see a section named "From Another User" where you can see the names of locations added by other group members.
Recipient Filtering
When first creating your audiences, they will include all mailable addresses that you have added or that are within your created areas. This will included known units such as apartments and suites.
When you are creating a message to send, you'll have the option to use recipient filtering such as limiting the selected audience to residential or business addresses.
Audience Size & Pricing
Your selected audience size is one of the two main factors in the cost of the final message send. As you make selections of audiences, recipient filtering, and set the format style and price of your message, Yodel will provide an initial estimate on screen, so you can have an idea of what the cost will be to send it out.
The initial estimate is not final. As your target date approaches, Yodel will confirm total number of recipients, remove duplicates, allow for any free message sends, and will notify you of the final price. You will need to approve the final price before Yodel continues to print and send your message, so your timely approval will be necessary in order to keep your target date.
Postal Mail vs Digital Delivery
Keep in mind that even though addresses and areas are geographically based and tied to recipients' mailing addresses, Yodel will honor each user's choice on how they wish to receive messages. Many message sends will be via postal mail (postcard), but that can be changed by each recipient if they prefer to receive messages in other digital formats.
Editing Sending Locations
Addresses are considered special data within Yodel. An address is core infrastructure information for a town or city and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has very specific formatting rules for addresses. As such, Yodel does not allow you to edit the address information itself. You are limited to only editing your custom names for your addresses.
Areas, on the other hand, are custom geographic regions of your own creation, drawn by you on a map. You are able to edit your area shape as well as the name you have given it.
Archiving and Deleting Locations
You can choose to archive or delete your locations. Archiving a location will remove it from your primary view of active locations, which is ideal for keeping things tidy but not completely removing your ability to access the location again. If you are truly done with a location, you have the option to delete it permanently.