The quality of customer addresses in German companies has further deteriorated over the past two years. The proportion of incorrect customer addresses grew from 12.6 to 13.2 percent. This means that one in eight addresses in the customer databases of the German economy is incorrect – despite artificial intelligence and digital tools for automation in the field of address management. This is shown by the current Address Study 2025 by Deutsche Post Direkt, which the Deutsche Post's subsidiary specializing in address and data management recently reported on.
The Deutsche Post Direkt examined a sample of the address cleansing conducted on behalf of customers in 2024 for the study. Approximately 120 million customer addresses from 200 companies across ten industries were anonymized and evaluated.
The Address Study 2025 examines the reasons why mail cannot be delivered to customers. First and foremost are relocations and deaths (5.9 percent). According to the analysis, an additional 4.5 percent of the addresses are not current with the companies, but there is relocation information available for these addresses. This means that with the help of address cleansing, letters and packages reach the right person at their new address.
Duplicates are not uncommon
In 2.2 percent of the addresses, significant errors in street and place names, as well as incorrect postal codes, prevent delivery. In addition, there are incorrect house numbers (0.7 percent). As the study shows, duplicates, i.e., double or multiple identical addresses, are also not uncommon in the databases (2.8 percent).
Additionally, there are misspelled addresses (5.3 percent) which, according to Deutsche Post Direkt, may reach the recipient but their incorrectness may potentially negatively impact the image of the sending company.
"Early address verification detects outdated and incorrect customer addresses, prevents returned mail, and thus contributes to cost reduction and lower CO2 emissions," said Petra Weber, Managing Director of Deutsche Post Direkt GmbH. "The study results show that many companies still have potential for optimization in maintaining their customer data. Those who want to stay in constant dialogue with their customers should start with address updating."
The ten industries examined in the study perform very differently in terms of data quality, according to Deutsche Post Direkt: The online retail sector scores with 91.3 percent current and deliverable addresses. In the second-ranked industry, the banks, 90.4 percent of customer addresses are current. With only 81.8 percent current and deliverable addresses, the public sector lands in last place in the industry comparison. Here, data quality has worsened over the past two years, and the proportion of undeliverable addresses rose from 13.9 to 18.2 percent.
The Deutsche Post Direkt Address Study 2025 can be downloaded at: postdirekt.de/studien
