MAIL

Business units and market positions

We deliver Germany’s mail

Every single working day, we deliver around 70 million letters. This makes us Europe’s largest postal enterprise. We offer all types of products and services to both private and business customers, ranging from standard letters to merchandise and including special services such as cash on delivery (COD) and registered mail. Letters can be franked using traditional stamps, by purchasing postage online and now even via text message. Stamps remain popular collectors’ items and more than one million stamp collectors have our new stamp designs delivered to them postage-paid every month. We also sell German collectors’ coins under a contract with the German government. Alongside our standard products, we develop tailor-made mail solutions for our business customers. We digitalise their incoming mail, for example, and deliver it to the internal recipients electronically.

Traditionally, our mail business has focused on Germany. Since being fully liberalised at the start of 2008, however, the German letter mail market has faced heightened competition. Moreover, the domestic market for mail communication is shrinking as conventional mail is being replaced increasingly by electronic communication media. In the reporting year, the market decreased by 2% to around €6.5 billion (previous year: €6.6 billion). We succeeded in increasing our market share to 87.7% (previous year: 87.2%) thanks to our high quality and flexible prices.

Advertising with Deutsche Post avoids wastage

Companies wishing to target specific customers make use of traditional dialogue marketing tools. We provide technical solutions that not only allow customers to plan and create advertising mail easily but also to calculate and optimise postage. One key factor in the success of direct advertising is the availability of address lists that have been checked, purged and updated. We offer online tools and services that can be used to ensure the quality of addresses. In addition, we develop solutions for multi-channel customer dialogue. Our services range from consulting and concept development all the way to media planning and purchasing as well as the production and dispatch of advertising material. We thus combine dialogue marketing with conventional advertising. We also conduct market research to measure the impact of such advertising.

Dialogue marketing is the part of the advertising market that is relevant to us. The market for advertising mailings and telephone and e-mail marketing is currently being shaped by the trend amongst companies in Germany to limit advertising expenditures. In 2008, this market had a volume of €20.4 billion, a decrease of 2.1% year on year. The tense economic situation has put pressure on traditional mail-order companies, causing them to lower their advertising budgets. We have maintained our share of 13.4% in this highly fragmented market.

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