Address match rate — what to expect
Before we lodge a single envelope, we run your address data through Australia Post's Postal Address File: a national database of over 12.7 million unique delivery points (as of June 2025) — residential and business street addresses, roadside mailboxes, and PO Boxes. Every address that matches gets an 8-digit Delivery Point Identifier (DPID) barcode printed on the envelope, which qualifies the lodgement for the highest postage discount tier and means Australia Post can sort it automatically.
The proportion of your data that gets matched is your match rate. It's a useful number to know, because it predicts both your postage outcome and your return-mail volume.
What's a good match rate?
Across more than ten years and millions of records, here's how match rates typically land:
- 98%+ — exceptional. You're maintaining your database carefully.
- 95% — strong. Most well-kept databases land here.
- 90% — average. The midpoint of all the customer data we see.
- 85% — below average. We'll dive in and tell you what's happening.
- Below 80% — likely to produce noticeable return mail. Don't worry — we've recovered usable data from databases that started below 50%.
What's "acceptable" also depends on volume. A 10,000-piece run at 90% means a thousand envelopes paying top-tier postage and possibly returning. The same percentage on a 300-piece run is thirty pieces — usually negligible.
| Volume | Acceptable match-rate target |
|---|---|
| 1–300 | 80% |
| 301–2,000 | 85% |
| 2,001–5,000 | 90% |
| 5,001–10,000 | 95% |
| 10,001–25,000 | 98% |
| 25,000+ | 99% |
What causes mismatches?
- Spelling drift — Mac vs Mc, Mt vs Mount, suburbs that look right but aren't.
- Misspelled streets and suburbs.
- Wrong unit or street numbers.
- Fake addresses — some recipients submit junk to opt out of mail.
An unmatched address doesn't always produce return mail. Australia Post drivers carry local knowledge and often deliver despite a problem.
What we do when match rate is low
We tell you before we print. Most customers do one of three things:
- Re-check the unmatched addresses and resubmit. Often a quick fix in the source database lifts the rate substantially.
- Send anyway and monitor return mail. Reasonable when the campaign is time-sensitive or the recipients are recoverable through other channels.
- Drop the unmatched addresses from the run. Saves postage and processing on records that probably won't reach a real recipient.
We'll recommend which path makes sense for your job, your data and your timeline. You make the call.
You don't need to clean your data first
The benchmarks above are what we typically see after we've done our standard data-cleaning pass — dedupe, validation, address-matching. They're not what you need to walk in with. Send us your data in whatever shape it's in.