A Comprehensive Guide on How to Address An Envelope UK Royal Mail Correctly
Did you ever wonder how the Post Office manages your mail items? Think of it as a highly-regulated and central system that helps Royal Mail deliver your mail to the correct recipients! But is there a way you can help the postal employees deliver on time?
The answer is yes! You can do your bit to help them get your items to the destination without issues by using the prescribed address format.
Sounds easy-peasy? However, in reality, there are a series of Royal Mail address format rules you must follow. And this blog covers these guidelines to enable you to send your mail items affordably, speedily, and efficiently!
Let’s begin!
How to Address an Envelope UK?
Do you add the sauce first to the pizza base or the toppings? Of course, the sauce comes first, right? It’s a no-brainer!
Even a postal address needs you to layer the different elements in a well-defined order.
You may think how hard it is to write the correct address on an envelope or package! However, remember that Royal Mail returns hundreds of thousands of items to senders because of incorrect addressing. Hence, you must follow the prescribed address format to ensure that the Post Office delivers your mail accurately.
There are several elements within an address, and they are:
Premise Elements
They help the carrier deliver mail to the correct location within a premise. For example, suppose you want to mail to an industrial area with several wings. In such cases, it may get complicated to find the intended recipient. Thus, Royal Mail urges customers to mention at least one premise element to reduce delivery failures.
Here are some premise elements you can use for your UK address format and their examples:
- Organisation’s name (if applicable): ABC Pvt. Ltd.
- Sub-building: Wing G
- Building name: Tulip House
- Building number: A 50 The Flower Valley
You don’t need to add all these elements to your address on letter UK even if you have them all. Insert the premise details below the Mailer Defined Information (MDI), recipient’s name, and designation (while mailing to a commercial address).
Thoroughfare Elements
Next, you must include a thoroughfare to help postal workers get to the destination premises. It reduces unnecessary delivery delays and leaves no room for address format misinterpretation.
Royal Mail has made it optional to add the thoroughfare details below the premise elements in your letter address format UK. But, it is better to add this additional data for better deliverability, and here’s an example:
- Dependent thoroughfare: 1st Street
- Thoroughfare: Stanley Avenue
If you have the name of the dependent thoroughfare, you can skip mentioning the primary street.
Locality Elements
You should at least include one locality element while writing address on envelope UK. It could be a post town or locality where the Royal Mail workers can redirect your mail items for delivery. Always write the first characters of your post town in capital letters, like Milton Keynes, Hedge End, etc.
You may also add the county name with the post town on the second last line of your Royal Mail address format. But don’t leave more than two character spaces between these two elements.
Here are a few more combinations you may use:
- Add the county name and postcode on the same line with one or two character spaces between them.
- Add the postcode and post town on the same line with one or two spaces—provided the post town comes first.
Postcode
The next element in your UK envelope address format is the postcode that ranges between five to seven numbers. They are alphanumeric and help Royal Mail decide the delivery routes accurately.
Always insert the postcode in capital letters on the last line of your address format. Add one or two spaces between the outward and inward codes.
The outward code represents the post town or some internal district, whereas the inward code helps identify the street. See an example below:
- Post town: Abergele
- Postcode: LL22 7AA
So, here’s the full-fledged address format example you needed:
Olivia Fernsby
Junior Account Manager
Welfare Group of Industries
North Wing
504 Griffith Road
Llanddulas
Abergele
LL22 8ET
Find below another example of the London address format:
Steffie Sallow
17 Portobello Road
London
SW1A 1AA
Please note: Don’t add “Great Britain,” “London,” or “United Kingdom” if you are mailing from the UK.
PostGrid’s address verification API can help you standardise and validate your addresses in seconds. Thus, you don’t need to remember these address format guidelines whenever you want to mail something. Also, you can skip wasting hours and days of your staff’s precious time in checking whether the addresses are deliverable.
Punctuation Instructions
Now that you know how to write address on envelope UK, you must also understand how to punctuate your addresses.
Not surprisingly, you need to add the correct punctuation for the Royal Mail processing equipment to read your addresses precisely! Otherwise, the machines may pick up an invalid or incorrect location and cause faulty delivery or lost mail.
Thus, follow these punctuation rules in your address format to avoid such problems:
- You may add punctuation marks to addresses on Barcoded mailings or which don’t enjoy other such machineable discounts.
- Royal Mail restricts the use of underline formatting for any address element.
- You can use non-alphanumeric symbols and punctuation for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) mailings if they appear in their corresponding PAF* records.
- Alternatively, the Royal Mail address format allows you to eliminate all punctuation marks, even if they appear in the PAF.
- Senders can add graphical symbols and punctuation to the MDI or other addressee elements.
Editor’s Note: If you don’t want to follow the UK envelope format punctuation rules, you can stick with no punctuation and block letters throughout your addresses. This trick can help you save a lot of trouble differentiating between address data and adding the correct marks or symbols.
*PAF stands for Postcode Address File. It is a Royal Mail address database having nearly 28 million UK addresses with 1.8 million postcodes and 1.4 million commercial addresses. Royal Mail constantly updates this data to maintain validity and accuracy.
How to Format British Forces Post Office (BFPO) Addresses?
BFPO addresses have a different Royal Mail address format than the other UK addresses. The most commonly-used layout has four lines and includes the following aspects:
Service Number, Rank, Recipient’s name
Regiment or Unit
Location or Operation name (if applicable)
BFPO Number
Ensure that you don’t add the county or post town. Also, skip writing the destination country as part of your address on letter UK.
Furthermore, Royal Mail asks you to avoid using AIR MAIL stickers for BFPO mailings and seal the edges of your items with adhesive tape.
Additional Royal Mail Address Format Guidelines You Must Follow
Below, we have enlisted the most crucial requirements to keep in mind while writing address on envelope UK:
- Only mention one delivery address on your envelope or parcel. If there is a forwarding address, Royal Mail automatically takes care of it.
- The MDI should not consist of more than 64 characters. Also, it should only take one line above the mailing address.
- The font size of your addresses must either match the return address or be broader. It helps Royal Mail distinguish between the two addresses effectively.
- Avoid using bold and italic fonts for your letter address format UK.
- Try using one of the Royal Mail-preferred fonts, like Arial, Geneva, Verdana, Tunga, Lucida Console, Courier, etc. Moreover, they should be within the 10 to 12-point size range.
- You cannot use some of these recommended fonts for Business Mail (Advanced) and Response Services. Thus, read the relevant user guides for specific products before preparing your items and writing address on envelope UK.
- Please ensure that your address appears on the mail item as a block. Avoid spreading out the elements to avoid confusion.
- Don’t use more than one line for the exact address elements. For instance, the words ‘Princess Street’ should be on the same line.
- You can shift between different fonts and point sizes for varied address elements.
- There should be vertical gaps of 0.255 mm or more between every line of the address format. Also, the character pitch must only be 10 to 12 characters every 25.44 mm.
- The spacing between two words must be more than 5 mm.
- Refrain from leaving blank lines within your address format.
- Try writing or printing your delivery addresses in black or other dark colours. There should be adequate contrast between the envelope and text colours.
- Avoid splashing ink around or over your addresses. Furthermore, ensure your text isn’t blurry or deformed, or incomplete. Thus, it is better to print addresses than write them on parcels or envelopes.
The Royal Mail Address Format for Return Addresses
You may choose not to provide a return address to Royal Mail. It means you won’t get any mail returns, and the Post Office would probably discard them. Therefore, it can result in losses and wastage.
But, if you add a return address, you can follow the guidelines we discussed above. However, there are some other things you should consider, like:
- Only use block letters for your return address format.
- Use left formatting for the entire address.
- You can only use Letter Gothic or Lucida Console fonts for return addresses.
- Print them in either English or Welsh if the PAF has the address record in the same language.
- Add the phrase “Return Address” on the first line to distinguish the address clearly from the mailing details.
- Don’t mention any UK countries or counties within the return address format.
- Print the return address in the title case, except for the postcodes (which always appear in the upper case).
- Print the postcode on the last line of the UK address format or the same line as the post town.
Royal Mail has changed the layout of an envelope recently. You can now place the return address on the centre of the flap or the top-left corner of the item’s front cover.
Here’s an example of a return address:
JOSEPH LOGHTY
Lifecare Services PVT LTD
Anderson Close
Dorcan
Swindon
SN3 5TQ
Why Is It Crucial to Use the Correct Address Format for Mailing Items?
Apart from deliverability, there are many reasons for prioritising the use of a correct Royal Mail address format, and they are:
Improved Customer Satisfaction
We are sure you must have received several customers’ calls over delivery delays at some point! But did you try digging into why there are delays in the mailing process? Though the issue is from the Post Office’s end sometimes, you cannot overlook how poorly formatted addresses can affect your order processing.
Royal Mail can’t guarantee accurate delivery on time if you do not use the prescribed UK envelope format. Hence, the postal employees would have to sort your items by hand, wasting time and manual effort. These delays can anger your customers and tarnish your brand reputation.
More Mailing Discounts
The Post Office offers several shipping discounts on presorting and bulk mailing. But, you must know how to address an envelope UK Royal Mail correctly to avail of these benefits.
You can use automated address verification software or API like PostGrid to prepare your mail pieces and add valid addresses. The process is simple, time-efficient, and affordable. Also, you don’t need technical expertise to integrate our API into your CRM and start validating addresses in a few minutes.
Fewer Mail Returns
Imagine printing personalised marketing items for your customers only for the Post Office to return them. You can either reship these items and spend on postage once more or discard them. In either case, it hampers your growth and restricts you from marketing your brand. Thus, not following the Royal Mail address format can lead to severe campaign failures.
How Can PostGrid’s Address Verification Services Help You Mail Efficiently?
You may have thousands of customer entries in your database already! But are they correct and helpful? Can you launch a well-designed marketing campaign using this data? Probably, not!
Perhaps, you didn’t standardise your records according to the UK envelope format. Also, you didn’t update your mailing lists from time to time.
The truth is that—data management and using the proper letter address format UK is far from easy… You must access the Royal Mail PAF to check whether your addresses are deliverable. Also, you need to compare your database with the National Change of Address (NCOA) file as millions of people move yearly.
Hence, it can be hard to learn how to write an address on a letter and follow it religiously! Luckily, it is when PostGrid comes in. Our address verification services are PAF-certified and help you make your delivery addresses mail-ready.
But that’s not it! We also help you filter out outdated entries to save you from investing in sending mail to them. More of our features include international address verification, bulk processing, autocomplete, fuzzy matching, etc.
Thus, you don’t need to think twice about using the Royal Mail address format because PostGrid has you covered. Also, our affordable pricing plans make PostGrid the first choice for address verification and direct mailing services for thousands of clients.
“Address verification is very tricky. You must combine several resources to get it right! Some addresses are under construction, while some are vacant. And it is impossible to tell which addresses are apt for mailing. We worried about these things for too long before we started using PostGrid. Now, we simply upload the addresses we want to check, and PostGrid returns accurate results in the blink of an eye.”
“PostGrid’s address verification services help us access a cleansed database. So, whenever we want to launch a campaign or even make an operational decision, we rely on PostGrid.”
These are some reviews from our long-term clients who believe in PostGrid’s advanced address verification capabilities. You can also request a demo now to see how to employ the correct address format for your mailing lists without doing anything manually.
To Summarise
Addressing a letter is not hard, but doing it right is! Remember, Royal Mail deals with billions of mail items almost daily. Hence, you cannot expect the Post Office to go out of its way to fix an error in your UK envelope format.
It is your job to rectify the mistakes and understand how to address an envelope UK. Also, don’t forget to follow the simple things, like using legible handwriting and leaving enough margin areas. Try being as neat as possible and helping the postal workers deliver your mail without problems!
PostGrid’s address verification API and software help you cross-confirm any number of addresses simultaneously. The integrations allow you to check address validity at every point of your daily operations. Thus, you can use PostGrid for marketing, finance, compliance, and other purposes.
Sign up now to know more about PostGrid’s automated solutions to help you send items with the correct Royal Mail address format!
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source https://www.postgrid.co.uk/how-to-address-an-envelope-uk/
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