New Addressing Requirements For Flats

On March 29th, 2009 the new USPS addressing requirements for flats went into affect. Flats are defined as direct mail measuring 11.5″ (w) x 6.125″ (h) up to a maximum size of 15″ (w) x 12″ (h).

To make things simple, we’re going to recap the new requirements and then point you to a couple of PDFs that contain additional information. This recap comes straight from the PDFs linked to below.

3 New Requirements for Standard & First-Class Mail:

1./ Mailers must address each piece using a minimum of 8-point type. Each character must be at least 0.080 inch high.

2./ If the mailpiece bears a POSTNET or Intelligent Mail barcode with a delivery point routing code, mailers may use 6-point type in all capital letters. Each character must be at least 0.065 inch high.

3./ On all automation pieces, the characters in the address must not overlap, the address lines must not touch or overlap, and each address element may be separated by no more than five blank character spaces. (A blank character space can equal the width of the widest letter used in the type.)

1 Additional Requirement For Standard Mail Only:

1./ Mailers must place the delivery address in the “top half” of the mailpiece (at the time of this writing, every piece of USPS literature we have says this is NOT a requirement for First-Class flat mail).

For more detailed addressing information, click below on the class of flat direct mail you send out.

First-Class | Standard

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