Is Saturation Mailing the missing piece in your direct mail strategy?

We recently shared a blog about our new AI-optimized Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) offering—a cost-effective way to get smarter about reaching a wide audience. It’s a powerful service that helps our clients move fast and efficiently. But like we said in that post, direct mail isn’t about finding one universal approach and tripling down. It’s about building a flexible toolkit and adapting your strategy based on your audience, geography, budget, goals, and a range of other factors.

That’s where Saturation Mailing comes in. It’s another powerful tool in the direct mail playbook—especially when you’re trying to reach as many qualified households as possible, while still maintaining control and strategic nuance. Let’s dig into how it works and why we think it deserves a spot in your toolkit.

What is Saturation Mailing?

Saturation Mailing is a type of bulk mailing that allows you to qualify for discounted postage rates by delivering to a high percentage of addresses within a postal route—at least 90% of all residential addresses or 75% of all total addresses within that route. It's designed for reaching entire neighborhoods or regions, without requiring address-level targeting for each individual recipient.

It’s an efficient middle ground: you don’t need to build a fully personalized list, but you also don’t need to send indiscriminately. Instead, you focus on a geographic area with broad appeal and meet the threshold for postage discounts by sending to most—but not necessarily all—households.

This approach is especially useful when your product or service has broad local appeal—like community solar, internet service, or home improvement offerings. It helps you scale up affordably while keeping some strategic nuance, especially when paired with smart suppression and geographic targeting tools.

Thanks to USPS rules around Saturation Mailing, you can get smarter by suppressing addresses that don’t make sense for your campaign—without losing your discount, as long as you stay above the required delivery threshold. Typically, that means mailing to at least 90% of residential addresses or 75% of all deliverable addresses (residential + business) on a given route. This flexibility lets you skip over existing customers, low-propensity households, or any other segments that aren’t a fit—without resorting to fully targeted mail.

The role of suppression—and how Faraday helps

One of the most powerful parts of Saturation Mailing is suppression. You don’t need to mail every single address in a route, you just need to hit the threshold. Faraday helps you suppress existing customers, low-scoring leads, and households that don’t match your ideal personas.

Our platform uses behavioral and demographic data to score every household in the U.S., so you can make informed decisions about where to send—and where to hold back.

This is also a natural extension of other Faraday services, like persona modeling to define your most valuable segments, predictive scoring to prioritize high-intent households, and deployment planning to map out the smartest execution path.

How does it compare to EDDM and fully targeted mail?

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is another bulk mailing program offered by USPS. And while it is similar to Saturation Mailing, it comes with some specific limitations. It’s limited to flat-sized mailpieces (like postcards or bifolds), and doesn’t support letter-size mail in envelopes. It also doesn’t allow you to suppress addresses or use named recipients within a route. Accordingly, targeting services like our AI-optimized EDDM help you choose which routes will perform best in their totality, not how to target within individual routes.

EDDM is great for broad awareness plays where cost is the primary concern and response rate isn’t as critical. Although it’s typically 10–15% more expensive than Saturation Mailing, it remains a popular choice for small businesses because of its simplicity. With no need for mailing lists, suppression logic, or complex prep, EDDM makes it easy to get a campaign out the door quickly—especially for hyperlocal efforts like restaurant promotions, political flyers, or community event announcements. But if you’re aiming for higher ROI, more precise targeting, or the ability to suppress known non-converters, Saturation Mailing is almost always the smarter long-term investment.

Fully targeted mail, on the other hand, gives you total control. With Faraday, that means using predictive models to select individual households based on their likelihood to convert, lifetime value potential, or alignment with your brand’s key personas. You can personalize messaging, time campaigns to buying cycles, and avoid waste almost entirely. It’s the most precise option in your toolkit—but it also comes with higher postage costs and more logistical complexity, which is why it’s often used for high-value offers or audiences where every conversion counts.

That’s why Saturation Mailing is such a valuable middle ground. It offers many of the benefits of targeting—like address suppression and flexible mail formats—without the full cost and complexity. Compared to EDDM, it gives you more strategic control. Compared to fully targeted mail, it’s faster and more affordable to scale.

When to use it

Saturation Mailing is ideal when you’re targeting neighborhoods with broad appeal, want to blend efficiency with some degree of targeting, and need to use mail formats (like letters) that drive better response rates. It's also a great option when your audience is geographically clustered but not defined by narrow demographics.

Because you can suppress part of the list—like current customers or low-propensity leads—you get more relevance and less waste. That’s where Faraday shines.

Faraday is more than a mail vendor—we’re a strategic partner

Faraday isn’t in the business of selling templates or one-size-fits-all strategies. We offer a range of predictive tools and mailing options—from EDDM to household-level targeting to Saturation Mailing—because we know that every campaign has unique needs.

What makes us different isn’t just what we offer. It’s how we help you use those tools together to maximize results. We don’t just help you get in the mailbox—we help you get there smarter.

Conclusion

In direct mail, versatility is everything. EDDM, Saturation, and fully targeted delivery all have a role to play. The key is knowing when and how to use each.

With Faraday, you’re not just choosing a tool—you’re gaining a strategic partner who helps you adapt, refine, and win. Let’s build campaigns where every piece counts.