How To Address a Letter or Package: A Complete Guide

As a small business owner, you’ll send plenty of mail—everything from hand-packed orders to direct mailers, brand merchandise like stickers, postcards, prints, thank you cards for your most loyal customers, and other business mail and professional communication. It seems obvious, but it’s critical to address all that mail correctly: illegible handwriting or incorrect formatting could make mail undeliverable, causing delays in shipping and fulfillment, extra customer service work, and a hit to hard-earned customer trust.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to address a professional letter, from formatting to proper postage, international requirements, and more.

How to address a letter

1. Write the return address in the upper left corner
2. Write the recipient’s name in the center
3. Write the recipient’s address
4. Place postage in the upper right corner

You’ll likely encounter a few different scenarios when addressing professional mail. Here’s a quick how-to, along with guidelines for postage rates, international shipping, and more.

1. Write the return address in the upper left corner

There are two schools of thought when it comes to providing a return address on mail from your small business or brand, especially if you don’t have an in-person office location: Some business owners don’t mind using their home address for order fulfillment, while others prefer the anonymity of a local PO Box or fulfillment warehouse, or paying for a virtual business address through a service like VirtualPostMail.

While using a sender address isn’t technically required (unless you’re sending things internationally), it’s recommended by the United States Postal Service (USPS) to prevent “dead letter mail,” or mail that is essentially undeliverable. Once you decide on the address you’d like to use, write it clearly in the upper left-hand corner of your envelope, or centered on the back flap.

2. Write the recipient’s name in the center

Next, write the first and last name of your recipient in the center of the envelope. If you like, you can use an honorific or the recipient’s professional title, if relevant. If you aren’t sure of your recipient’s title or form of address, it’s best to omit it. Doing so won’t impede delivery, and it will avoid a potentially embarrassing gaffe if you get it wrong.

• If sending your mail to an entire family, you can address it by the surname, like “The Jones Family,” or simply, “Jones.”
• For mail sent to multiple members of a single household, you may include both full names either on the first line or separated by a symbol like “&” or “+,” or the written “and.”
• For mail sent to an individual employee at a larger business, you can write the recipient’s full name, followed by “℅” (care of) the company name. If you don’t know the name but are hoping to reach someone in a particular department of the company, like human resources, you can use the job title. (For example: “Chief People Officer, ℅ Best Brand in the World,” or “Arts Editor, ℅ Your Local Paper.”)

3. Write the recipient’s address

Below the name, add your recipient’s mailing address, or the address of the company you want to reach. Double-check the number and street designation (whether someone lives on a street, road, lane, court, etc.) before writing.

Then, on two to three separate lines, include:

• Street address, including any directional suffixes like NW, E, etc.
• Secondary address unit, like an apartment number or suite number, if applicable
• City, state, and ZIP code

4. Place postage in the upper right corner

Lastly, you’ll need to affix a stamp to your letter. For standard letters weighing less than 3.5 ounces, one Forever Stamp is sufficient. For anything larger, or for international deliveries or First-Class Mail, you’ll need to calculate exactly the right amount. A kitchen scale is a useful tool to keep on hand for exact weighing, and the USPS has a postage price calculator to give you a better idea of what to expect.

Tips for addressing a letter

Here are a few best practices for addressing your mail.

• Double-check spelling. Before you address your letter, be sure you’ve spelled the recipient’s name correctly.
• Confirm or omit title and honorific. Confirm titles and honorifics, or omit them to avoid potential errors. Some recipients may use a professional title (e.g., “Dr.”) or prefer Ms. over Mrs.
• Maximize legibility. Print clearly, use all capital letters if possible, and choose dark, smudge-resistent ink.
• Confirm mailing addresses before sending. If you’re not automatically generating shipping labels as part of your order fulfillment process, or if the mail you need to send is separate from individual sales, be sure to double-check written addresses against their source before you pop it in the mail. Typos happen, so save yourself time later by spending a few more minutes checking your work. Shopify weaves customer address confirmation into your check-out process through a validation API for extra accuracy.
• Properly format international addresses. International addresses typically follow the same format as domestic ones, but are not verified by the USPS (though they do provide some guidelines), so ensure you have all the necessary requirements for international addresses, which vary by country.

How to address a package

Shipping labels require a bit more information than a standard business letter, like weight, shipping method, and package tracking—wh/ich is why it’s often a good idea to print your package labels instead of writing them by hand. Printing your labels ahead of time ensures all the important information is clear and easily scannable by the post office and other delivery service providers.

Ecommerce stores doing business on Shopify can take advantage of Shopify Shipping, which gives you access to shipping labels from popular carriers, including UPS and DHL Express. In these cases, shipping and return address information is automatically incorporated into a properly formatted shipping label, which you can then order and print in bulk. If you prefer to create your own return labels, Shopify offers a free template.