Targeted Saturation Mailing
Saturation mailing to the carrier routes that fit your customer
A postcard to every household on the carrier routes you choose, in any ZIP code, with the routes picked by average income, home value, age of the home, age of the adults or children at home. No list needed.
Saturation mail skips the list. Instead of addressing a card to named people, it goes to every household on a carrier route, the set of addresses one letter carrier delivers. The postage is the lowest the Postal Service offers for advertising mail, because the mailer has done the sorting down to the order the carrier walks. The real question is which routes, and that is where most saturation mailings waste money: a whole ZIP code mailed because it was easy, when half its routes hold nobody who will ever buy.
We pick the routes by who lives on them. Every route carries averages: household and individual income, the value of the homes, how old the homes are, the age of the adults, and whether children live there. Choose any one of those or any combination, in any ZIP code in the continental US, and the mailing goes only to the routes that match. A roofer can take the routes where the homes are twenty years old or more; a pediatric dentist, the routes with children at home; a financial planner, the routes where incomes and home values run highest.
What is a saturation mailing?
A mailing that goes to every household on a carrier route rather than to named people. To qualify for the USPS saturation price, the mail has to reach at least 90% of the active residential addresses on each route, or 75% of all the addresses on it, and it has to be sorted in the order the carrier walks. In return for that work the postage is the lowest available for advertising mail, and there is no list to pay for.
How are carrier routes chosen by demographics?
Each route is described by the averages of the households on it. We pull the routes in the ZIP codes you name, apply the selections you set, and send back the routes that pass with the household count on each, so you can see what the mailing covers before it is quoted. Averages are averages: a route whose average home value clears your line still has some homes below it. That is the trade saturation makes, a little waste in exchange for the lowest postage and no list cost, and it is why the selection matters more than the size of the drop.
Saturation or a targeted list?
Saturation wins when most of a neighborhood could be your customer: home services, restaurants, retail, real estate farming, anything sold to whoever lives nearby. A targeted list wins when the buyer is a narrow slice, such as homeowners over 65 or households that just moved in, and paying for each name costs less than mailing the neighbors who will never buy. Plenty of businesses run both, saturating the routes closest to them and mailing a list further out.
When only some households on a street buy from you, targeted direct mail addresses just those homes. How big the carrier routes run in each metro is on the city pages.
Request a free quote
Quote a saturation mailing job for your city
Send the postcard size, the quantity and the city it is going to. Pricing is set for your city and your job, so you get a written quote — printing, mail processing and postage — with no obligation. No finished design or mailing list needed.
Answers
Saturation Mailing: questions people ask
How much does a saturation mailing cost?
It is quoted for the routes in it. The cost is printing, mail processing and saturation postage, and it moves with the card size, the household count and the city the routes are in, so we price each drop rather than publish a rate. Choosing routes by demographics adds no list cost.
Can I target saturation mail by income?
Yes. Carrier routes can be selected by average household income or average individual income, alone or together with home value, home age, the age of the adults and whether children are present. The card then goes to every home on the routes that qualify.
What is the minimum for a saturation mailing?
Ours is 1,000 pieces, usually one or two carrier routes. The Postal Service’s own rule is about coverage rather than count: for the saturation price, each route has to be mailed to at least 90% of its active residential addresses or 75% of all its addresses.
Do I need a mailing list for saturation mail?
No. The mailing goes to every household on each route you choose, so there is nothing to buy or upload. You name the ZIP codes and the selections; we return the qualifying routes and their household counts.
Which postcard size works best for saturation mail?
The 6×11. It is the largest card that still mails as a letter-size piece, and on a saturation drop, where nobody asked for the card, size is what gets it read. The 5×8.25 suits a drop that repeats every few weeks, when cost per piece matters more.