Hi Ryan,
In my experience EDMs have their place where keywords have low Difficulty scores (less than 30). To test this in 2017 I launched a domain for my UX Design agency using the URL: https://ux-design.agency/
We're tracking the keywords in Moz since 2017 and you can see the Moz chart here.
At this time we have 26 keywords on page 1 for our EDM and similar variants. I think in this specific case another benefit has been that 3rd party authority websites that do want to link with just the URL, result in links that contain the target keyword text. You can see this in the last couple of months where we have won some awards and the resultant links have improved the organic positions.
Lastly, I have seen this not work on more competitive search terms.
Hope that helps 
Peter
I think the success of this strategy
