Tips and Tricks on Sending International Mail
Nowadays, letters are usually sorted automatically. Follow these instructions to avoid manual processing which will delay delivery considerably:
Use a white envelope and black printed text.
Letters are scanned and automatically sorted. Use black font on a white background with a uniform font size, as done by sedamo.
Only write on one side of the envelope. Recipient and sender addresses and stamps should be placed on the same page.
The background is that both sides are scanned and the computer considers the total darker side for the address side. If the computer does not find any franking there in the second step, the letter is sorted out. In particular, do not put any advertising text on the back of the envelope, otherwise the machine may try to interpret this text as an address.
Use a rectangular envelope.
We recommend a DIN/ISO format such as DIN-DL (110 mm × 220 mm), DIN-C6 (114 mm × 162 mm) or DIN-C4 (229 mm × 324 mm). In particular, square envelopes can be rotated 90° during automatic sorting and can then not be processed.
You are sending a letter to…
China
The Chinese State Post accepts addresses in Chinese characters, in the Latin version (Romanization: Pinyin) and in English. Addresses in the Latin alphabet are initially translated into Chinese at the international post office in Beijing. This leads to a delay of several days. Frequently, the address cannot be transferred unambiguously, which leads to several delivery attempts and can lead to delivery times of several weeks.
sedamo delivers the address in Chinese script and thus guarantees the fastest possible delivery.
Germany
Germany no longer has its own postal service: the state postal service was dissolved.
Letters from abroad to Germany are usually delivered by the “Deutsche Post DHL Group”.
Letters via Express Mail Service (EMS) are delivered via DHL and General Logistics Systems (GLS) and sometimes have a considerably longer delivery time than normal airmail.
Iran
Iran is the only country in the world with an unique postal code per address. Please make sure that you receive the correct postal code from your correspondence partner.
Russia
The Russian state post only accepts letters with a Cyrillic address. Letters with a Latin or English address will be rejected.
sedamo delivers the address in Cyrillic script and correct formatting.
Would you like to share your experience sending international mail? Please write to us.