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How to choose EDDM carrier routes

By Paul Burns, General Manager, Brand Boost Prints, Spokane · Facts checked · 6 min read

The short answer

Choose EDDM routes by how close they are to your door, how many homes each holds, whether they are residential or business, and who lives on them. A carrier route is the set of addresses one letter carrier walks or drives; a route in Washington holds about 600 homes on average. USPS’s EDDM tool lets you filter routes by age, household size and income, using Census data, then select as many routes as you like for one mailing.

Four things to decide

  1. Where your customers come from. Start from the address of your shop or your best customers, and add routes outward. For a local service, the nearest few miles usually matter most.
  2. How many homes you can afford to reach. Every route you add is a whole route: you cannot mail half of one. Multiply the homes on the route by your per-piece price (cost guide) to see the cost of each addition.
  3. Residential or business. The tool offers residential-only routes or residential and business together. USPS’s simplified address is “Postal Customer” for all active deliveries, and “Residential Customer” for residential only. A consumer offer rarely needs the businesses on a mixed route; a B2B offer might want them.
  4. Who lives there. The tool’s age, household-size and income filters are estimates based on U.S. Census Bureau data, applied to the route. Our own map uses the Bureau’s American Community Survey. They describe the neighbourhood, not the individual household, so treat them as a way to rank routes and not as a promise about any one mailbox.

A worked example: four routes in Spokane Valley’s 99216

Say you sell home services to higher-income households and you want residential-heavy routes in ZIP Code 99216. Filtering that ZIP’s routes to those with at least 400 homes and few businesses, and ranking by estimated median household income, gives these four. The counts are the delivery counts in our route map; the income and household size are Census estimates.

Four residential routes in ZIP Code 99216, highest estimated household income first
RouteHomesBusinessesEst. median household incomeEst. people per household
99216C0327474$109,6002.93
99216C0228054$97,6002.89
99216C0334766$90,6002.59
99216C02370114$85,5002.48
Four routes2,72928

Income and household size are U.S. Census ACS 2020–2024 estimates apportioned to each route by area, so they are estimates. Routes are identified by ZIP Code plus carrier route.

Mailing our 6.25″ × 9″ piece to those 2,729 homes prices at $1,375.47 all in, or $0.50 per home, with printing, postage and mailing prep. That is within the 5,000-per-ZIP-per-day limit for EDDM Retail, so it goes in a single drop.

Tips that save money

Sources

  1. USPS, Every Door Direct Mail: route filters (Route, Residential, Total, Age, Size, Income, Cost) and Census footnote
  2. USPS Domestic Mail Manual 602.3.2: “Postal Customer” and “Residential Customer” simplified addresses
  3. USPS Domestic Mail Manual 145: flats are separated by delivery route using the EDDM tool’s delivery statistics
  4. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (the source of income and household-size estimates)
  5. Brand Boost Prints route map: carrier-route boundaries and delivery counts (Precisely) with ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates

See your exact price

Pick your routes on the map. Printing, postage and mailing prep come out as one number, from the same pricing this guide uses.

Price my routes