Nine questions, in order. Answer them and you will know where you stand before anything is printed.
Most guidance on this subject answers the email question and hopes you will not notice. This is the postal version, worked through in the order the decisions actually arrive. It is general information, not legal advice, and every answer is anchored to a primary source you can check yourself.
No, a job title only. Then you are not handling personal data, UK GDPR does not apply to the address, and you can post. This is the quiet route past most of the anxiety in this subject, and it costs you the personalisation that makes the letter work, so use it deliberately rather than as a dodge.
Yes, a named individual. Continue.
No. The consent rules everyone remembers come from PECR, which governs electronic marketing: email, text, telephone, fax. Post is not electronic and PECR does not cover it. The ICO's own B2B guidance is written almost entirely about electronic channels for exactly this reason.
What you do need is a lawful basis under UK GDPR, and for B2B prospecting that is legitimate interests. The long version is here.
A legitimate interests assessment is three short paragraphs, not a project: what the purpose is, why post is a proportionate way to pursue it, and whether the recipient would be surprised. If the honest answer to the third is yes, the first two will not save you. Keep it with your marketing records and revisit it when the campaign changes.
A limited company's trading address is a corporate address. A sole trader's is usually somebody's house, and a director's service address at Companies House is published for statutory purposes rather than as a marketing list. Same envelope, very different reception. The decision table for the four business types is here, and which of a company's addresses to use is here.
Not for business post. The Mailing Preference Service is a consumer scheme, and there is no statutory business equivalent for post in the way CTPS exists for telephone calls. What binds you instead is the absolute right to object, plus your own suppression list. The full answer is here.
Enough for the reader to know who you are, why you are writing, where you got their address, and how to make you stop. One or two lines at the foot, plus a link or QR code to your privacy notice. If the data did not come from the person themselves, telling them the source is not a courtesy, it is what UK GDPR expects.
Then tax joins the conversation. HMRC treats business gifts as entertaining and disallows them, unless the gift carries a conspicuous advertisement, is not food, drink, tobacco or a voucher, and totals under 50 pounds per recipient per year. Miss any one condition and the whole amount is disallowed, not just the excess. VAT has its own 50 pound rule that works separately. The three conditions in full.
Then a gift of value is usually the wrong instrument entirely. Trusts, councils and departments run gifts and hospitality registers with low declaration thresholds, and during a live procurement the answer hardens to no. A letter and a personalised page carry no monetary value, need no declaration, and cannot embarrass anybody. Written up properly here.
You stop, permanently. The right to object to direct marketing is absolute: no balancing test, no expiry, no business justification that outweighs it. Suppress the record rather than deleting it, because deleting means your next list purchase quietly reintroduces them, which is the most common way companies mail somebody who has already asked them not to.
The one page version. If you need to send this to a DPO or a legal team: post is outside PECR and sits under UK GDPR alone; legitimate interests is the basis; write the assessment down; disclose the source on the letter; honour objections permanently; treat home addresses as a separate decision; and remember HMRC's gift conditions if anything of value goes in the envelope.
The ICO on direct marketing and on business to business marketing, HMRC's Business Income Manual at BIM45065 and VAT Notice 700/7 for gifts, and individual public sector standards of business conduct policies, which vary by organisation and are the document that actually governs your contact. Written by a software company rather than a law firm, so take advice before a large or regulated campaign.
Sam works at Rockkt, which builds software for sending physical post to sales prospects, so these questions arrive most weeks. How these guides are researched and written: our editorial policy.
Source line on every letter, suppression held at company level, residential addresses flagged before anything prints. Studio Free is five fully worked prospects a month, by invitation.