Saturation mailings aren’t for every company. But if you’re a small, local business or you want to reach only a localized portion of your audience—perhaps those within a 20-mile radius of a new store, for instance—than a saturation mailing might do the trick.
John Hull, vice president, technical services, for Rancho Santa Margarita, CA-based database services firm Melissa Data, defines a saturation mailing as “a targeted offer to the true customer base of a business. It’s inexpensive both in preparation and postage, and can reach customers very quickly.”
The U.S. Postal Service offers discounts for saturation mailings. Rates can be as low as $0.12 per mail piece for business mail and $0.08 for nonprofit mail. But to be eligible for the lower rate, the mailing must be directed to more than 90% of a carrier route, which is defined as the entirety of addresses to which a single postal carrier delivers. A typical carrier route consists of about 450 addresses.
The other main requirement for a saturation mailing, Hull says, is that the mailing has to be sorted in “walk sequence,” the actual sequence that the carrier travels his or her route. “Many list brokers have self-serve, online products and services–and specialists to help–that range from free simple queries to instantaneously downloadable saturation mailing lists,” Hull says.
Simple counts of the addresses of a specific carrier route can be used for planning piece totals; rough costs for mailing can be estimated through reliable mailing houses or printers, or on the USPS Website. These sources can also advise on the dimension limits for postcards or letters used in saturation mailings, which according to Hull are 3 in. by 5 in. at a minimum.