Postcodes for Marketing

If you are in Marketing, you need to understand how Royal Mail's Postcodes work in the UK.

Your marketing database will contain postcodes, which give you a great way to segment your data. The easiest way is to use the 124 Postcode Areas, to see where your data is distributed around the UK.

There are several levels of detail beyond this.

For example let's look at BH23 1QL:

• BH refers to the Postcode Area of Bournemouth. (There are 124 Postcode Areas in the UK.)
• BH23 refers to a Postcode District within the Postcode Area of Bournemouth. (There are approximately 2,950 Postcode Districts.)
• BH23 1 refers to the Postcode Sector. (There are approximately 9,650 Postcode Sectors.)
• The QL completes the Postcode. The last two letters define the 'Unit Postcode' which identifies one or more small user delivery points (on average there are 15 delivery points per Postcode) or an individual Large User.

There are approximately 2.14 million Unit Postcodes, and a total of over 27 million addresses in the UK.

• View a Postcode Areas Map of the UK.
• View a table of all 124 postcode Areas and Town names.
• View a Postcode Districts Map for Inner London.