Every Door Direct Mail

How to pick EDDM routes (and why your city's ZIP Codes cross the line)

The USPS route tool is free and does the counting for you. Here is what each column means, when to leave businesses out, and what to do when the routes spill past your city line.

Published Sat, Oct 17, 2026 · Updated Fri, Oct 23, 2026

• EDDM
• USPS rules
• Data sources
• Florida
• Broward County

Picking routes is the one part of an EDDM mailing only you can decide, because only you know who you want to reach. The USPS tool does the counting. This guide walks through it, column by column. If EDDM is new to you, start with what is EDDM or the Direct Mail 101 overview.

Open the tool

The tool lives at eddm.usps.com and needs no account until you save an order. The search box takes a full address, a city and state, or a ZIP Code.

A city search asks you to pick up to five ZIP Codes before it shows routes. Searching by ZIP Code skips that step: you see every route in that ZIP on the map and in a table under it.

Read a route row

Each row in the table is one carrier route. The columns, in USPS's own words where it has them (USPS EDDM user guide):

The age column is a share of the route in the age band you choose, such as 25 to 34. It is not a median age. Age, size and income come from Census Bureau data, and on the day we checked (October 7, 2026) those three cells showed "NaN%" and a dash while the counts loaded fine. If the demographics are blank, reload or come back later; the counts are what you pay for.

Residential only, or businesses too

The Refine Search menu has a choice between "Residential and Business Routes" and "Residential Routes Only". Postage is figured on every address in the option you choose.

For a campaign, leave them out: businesses don't vote, and the pieces land in office mailrooms. In the Davie example below, adding businesses to the same 13 routes added 937 addresses, almost a tenth more postage for pieces that land in office mailrooms.

Why routes cross your city line

USPS organizes EDDM by ZIP Code and carrier route (DMM 145.1.3). In the mapping tool, a city search becomes a list of ZIP Codes and every route is named by its ZIP; we have never seen it draw city limits. The Congressional Research Service puts it plainly: "Postal ZIP codes do not always align with recognized municipal boundaries" because they follow "mail routes and delivery points" (CRS IF12132).

For a county or state race that rarely matters. For a city race it does, because a route that runs into the next town delivers your mailer to people who can't vote for you. There are two fixes.

1. Check the routes against the city's boundary map. Broward County publishes a free municipal boundaries layer (Broward County Municipal Boundaries) and Palm Beach County publishes one too (Palm Beach Municipal Boundaries). Broward's carries the note "Not to be used for legal boundary determinations", which is fine for picking mail routes. Keep the routes that sit mostly inside the line and accept a little spill.
2. Switch to a list. If every piece has to land inside the city, mail an address list cut to the city. For a campaign, that list is usually the voter file, and our voter list mail service mails exactly the voters you pick.

Picking by income, and what the tool can't filter

The tool filters routes by age range, household size and average household income, using Census data (USPS EDDM). It has no filter for home value or the year a home was built.

If home value matters, say for a mailer on property taxes or a homestead question, pull your county property appraiser's data or open the appraiser's map, find the neighborhoods that fit, and then choose the carrier routes that cover them in the USPS tool. That last step is our method; USPS doesn't publish one.

Save the order and print the forms

When your routes are picked, the Order Summary shows the selected routes, the number of "Post Office Drop-Offs", the total pieces and the approximate cost. "Next Step" asks you to sign in to USPS.com. Once signed in you can save the order, come back to it, repeat it or cancel it, and print the postage statement (PS Form 3587) and the facing slips for each bundle.

"Post Office Drop-Offs" is the number of post offices you will visit. Each EDDM Retail mailing goes to the post office that delivers those routes (DMM 146.1.1), so routes in three ZIP Codes served by three offices mean three stops.

A Retail order in the tool is capped at 5,000 pieces, and USPS accepts at most 5,000 pieces per day per ZIP Code. A larger mailing becomes several orders.

A worked example: Davie

On October 6, 2026 we checked the 13 carrier routes we mapped for a mailing in the Town of Davie, in Broward County, across ZIP Codes 33314, 33324 and 33328.

• Residential only: 9,623 addresses.
• With businesses: 10,560 addresses.
• Per ZIP, residential: 2,968 in 33314, 1,950 in 33324 and 4,705 in 33328. Each is under the 5,000-per-ZIP daily cap, so all three ZIPs can mail the same day, in two or more tool orders.

Priced with us, residential only, on 6.5" × 9" postcards:

Postage is paid only on the 9,623 addresses. The other 377 cards in the 10,000 run are printed and not mailed; ask us about shipping them to you for canvassing. With businesses included the count passes 10,000, so we would quote that run at its exact size.

Or send us the ZIPs

You can do all of this in the USPS tool yourself. If you would rather not, send us the ZIP Codes or the neighborhood, and we'll map the routes with you, check them against the city line, and confirm the counts and postage before anything prints. See EDDM pricing or contact us.

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