# Royal Mail will destroy undeliverable mail without return addresses

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/09/30/royal-mail-will-destroy-undeliverable-mail-without-return-addresses/
- Published: 2004-09-30T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

In a cost-cutting exercise the Royal Mail has announced that, from 4 October 2004,
it will no longer attempt to return undeliverable mail that does not have an external
return address on it.
If your direct mail appeals do not include an external return
address (ERA) on the back, then from this week onwards you might never find out 
that some of your appeals have not been delivered.

Until now the Royal Mail handles 21 million items of mail that are marked return
to sender but which don’t have a return address on them. It has always tried to 
deliver them by getting them opened at a dedicated sorting centre to see if the 
contents could indicate a sender. From 4 October that service will cease.

The Royal Mail says that the best place to put an ERA is on the back of your mail,
in the middle at the top, no bigger than 70mm x 30mm.

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