Marketing Mail is USPS's commercial mail class for bulk letters and flats — the class postal insiders used to call Standard Mail — and its per-piece price is not a single number. Presort depth decides the discount, the piece's shape decides the base, and eligibility rules decide whether a mailing even qualifies. What follows is what the postal price list itself dictates, keyed to Notice 123, read on 2026-08-11.
USPS charges the mailer for the work the mailer does not do.
Marketing Mail eligibility is a checklist. Miss any gate and the mailing moves as First-Class or does not move at all.
| Gate | Rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum quantity | 200 pieces, or 50 pounds of mail | Bulk pricing is a scale discount; below the threshold, the piece pays retail |
| Weight per piece | Less than 16 ounces | A piece at or over 16 oz has to move as another class |
| Mailing account | Permit imprint, precanceled stamps or a metered indicium; PS Form 3615 opens the account | The commercial rate is not available to a walk-in customer |
| Presort | Mail Mixed AADC, AADC, 3-Digit, 5-Digit, or carrier route as depth allows | The mailer does the sorting; USPS pays for that work with a lower per-piece price |
A qualifying mailing is prepared in accordance with the Mail.dat file or the paper 8125 statement, dropped at a Business Mail Entry Unit or authorized entry point, and priced at the depth its presort actually reached — not the depth the mailer aimed for.
Postal price schedules for Marketing Mail Commercial Letters and Flats are a grid. Shape and machinability set the base rate; presort depth and destination-entry depth set the discount off that base. That is why a summary that reads “Marketing Mail is 46.7 cents a piece” is answering a different mailing than the one being priced.
Letters are the flat, machinable pieces up to 6.125 by 11.5 inches. Flats are large envelopes, catalogs and self-mailers up to 12 by 15 inches and 13 ounces. The two shapes have entirely separate price tables inside Notice 123.
The mailing that ends in 5-Digit or carrier-route bundles pays materially less per piece than the same mailing at Mixed AADC. That gap is the whole reason bureau services exist: the presort discount typically pays for the service and then some.
Dropping the pallets closer to the destination (DDU or DSCF, in postal shorthand) unlocks another discount tier. A national mailing that lands a truckload at a Sectional Center Facility pays less than the same mailing entered at the origin.
Two more variables sit on top. Nonprofit-authorized mailers pay a further discount below the commercial-price grid. Automation-eligible pieces (barcoded, formatted, machinable) pay less than the parallel non-automation prices at every depth. Both are worth checking against a mailing before the design is locked.
The one Marketing Mail flavour a small business can enter without a permit is Every Door Direct Mail Retail, or EDDM Retail. The mailer picks a set of carrier routes on the USPS Business Mail 101 tool, prepares saturation flats within the EDDM size rules, and drops the bundles at the destination post offices with an EDDM Retail statement. The per-piece rate lives on the same Notice 123 as everything else, in the EDDM Retail row, and it applies to unaddressed saturation mailings only.
EDDM Retail is capped at 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day and 200 to 5,000 pieces per mailing at a retail counter, with heavier programs stepping up to EDDM-BMEU for a formal permit. It is the only lane that lets a solo operator drop the local coffee shop's postcard blitz without an annual permit fee.
USPS retired Marketing Mail Parcels in 2020. Small parcels that used to move at that class now move as USPS Ground Advantage or Parcel Select, and both are on the current Notice 123 with their own weight-and-zone grids. A packaged sample that once qualified for a Marketing Mail parcel rate is a parcel-class shipment today.
Content rules for Marketing Mail have always been advertising-first. A mailing whose primary purpose is a bill, statement, transactional notice or personal correspondence does not qualify, regardless of how the piece is sorted, and USPS auditors reject the entry when the content is scanned. First-Class Presort exists to carry that mail at a commercial rate.
Notice 123 changes at each USPS price adjustment, generally twice a year, and the DMM sections are revised alongside. The figures printed on a mailer's price sheet age quickly; before every campaign the current Notice 123 is the file to open first.
USPS Marketing Mail is the commercial-only mail class that carries bulk letters, flats and, at retail through EDDM, small saturation-mail pieces. It replaced the older Standard Mail name in 2017. It is not available to individual senders; a mailing account with USPS is required.
200 pieces or 50 pounds is the minimum for a bulk Marketing Mail entry. Every Door Direct Mail Retail lets small businesses skip the permit for saturation carrier routes at the retail per-piece rate.
Not any more. USPS discontinued Marketing Mail Parcels; small parcels use USPS Ground Advantage or Parcel Select. Marketing Mail today is letters, flats and small unaddressed EDDM pieces.
Less than 16 ounces. A Marketing Mail piece at or over 16 oz has to move as another mail class.
On USPS Notice 123, the postal price list, in the Marketing Mail Commercial Letters and Flats sections. Prices vary by presort depth (Mixed AADC, AADC, 3-Digit, 5-Digit and carrier route), by shape and by weight tier, so a per-piece figure only means anything against the shape and sort level of a specific mailing.