More About National Change of Address and Address Change Services

Is You’re List a Little “Long In The Tooth?”

There are still some lapses in the system, however. Since a forwarding order is active for 18 months, it would follow, that after several quarterly mailings, to your full list, you would not get any FOE's. My experience, however, is that I still get some back every time I work with my clients' lists. The ACS isn't perfect, and even though it's system is carefully thought out, implementing it is a slow process of reorganizing postal working patterns right down to the carrier level. In other words, expect some paper FOE's back from most of your mailings - no matter how frequent they are.

If your list hasn’t been updated for a couple of years, you can bring it up to speed with the help of another USPS service: NCOA. The USPS describes NCOA as: "...an address change process that compares mailing lists with information from over 100 million address change cards filed by postal customers over the past three years. Address change information is provided for mailing list records that match with information from the address cards."

The daily change of address (COA) information is telecommunicated From Computer Forwarding System sites across the US to the USPS National Address Information Center (NAIC) in Memphis - home of CASS, ACS, NCOA and others.

The NAIC then consolidates this information and puts it on CD ROM. The address information is standardized against the ZIP+4 code database. The now standardized COA file is transmitted to private companies who are operating under a licensing agreement with the US Postal Service. These licensees, using USPS-approved software to process your mailing list(s) and make address corrections, standardize your addresses and add ZIP+4's to your records.

Every two weeks NCOA licensees receive as much as 1 million COA updates. These include address changes and deletions. This is to keep mailing list updates as current as possible. The licensees receive ZIP+4 code update files once a month. The NCOA database only goes back 48 months. Every two weeks, when the USPS contractors get their new data, the oldest two weeks of information are dropped from the file. This means that any addresses more than four years old will not be updated because they will not be able to be matched.

Typically, most of these licensees process huge lists, and when processing in bulk, the prices can be pretty reasonable. There is also a presupposition that your list is in the correct record format and layout, that you want your updated information to be in upper case and (in most cases) the file is sent over the Internet.

Prices range from $2.95 to 4.95 per thousand records with a minimum charge of $45.00 to $100.00. The variance in pricing is based on turn around time, quality of file format, degree of data scrubbing necessary to optimize a file for NCOA processing, etc.

Why NCOA when you’re using the ACS, in one form or another, already? There are many reasons. The first situation in which NCOA is a smart move is at the time you're first starting to use the ACS's correction services. If you haven't mailed to your list in quite awhile or haven't been requesting address corrections for your last several mailings - or any of your mailings - then NCOA is imperative. Starting out without an NCOA cleanup would mean a very expensive return the first few mailings (the first one is the biggest, of course, but it takes about three regular mailings to determine predictable numbers of returns). Remember those FOE's? Since NCOA goes back 4 years - 30 months further back than ACS records - many records can be recovered from NCOA which could not from ACS processing. Also, if you were to NCOA your list regularly at six month or one-year intervals, your ZIP+4 and address standardization would automatically be updated as well.

Put Your List on a Fitness Program

In general, these are the cyclical steps that will keep your list clean:

A mailing has gone out. The list was current and properly coded, the data went out to the lettershop on time and some sales have even been generated.

As manual (bad, bad, no biscuit.) or electronic (good doggy!) returns from the ACS are collected and stored for the next mailing’s preprocessing.

Your data entry continues while the next mailing date approaches and, perhaps, some additional new records have been imported from another list.

Now that mailing time is approaching, it's time to either manually or electronically use the ACS returns (or COA file) to update your list.

Address changes are changed, FOE's are either deleted or (better) marked as unmailable until NCOA has had a crack at them, and nixies are removed.

Time to standardize and code your list; this is where CASS Certified (aka Zip+4 coding) comes in.

Now that your list has had all the new additions, corrections and deletions integrated into it and the addresses have been CASS standardized and coded, it's time to take out the duplicate records. Duplication removal is a science unto itself; how people approach it varies - but whatever your solution to this ongoing problem, this is the point at which it should take place.

You're ready to prepare your next mailing.

The cycle begins again: A mailing has gone out. The list was current and properly coded; the labels went out to...

Once a year (twice is even better) send your list off to be matched against NCOA and pick up any changes you can. Those previously marked FOE's will either be updated or found to be nixies (or may not change tat all). Some records, which were thought to be good, will turn out to be nixies. Now ou can delete any records that are either nixies or FOE’s, which couldn't be updated.

It really is that simple. If you consistently follow this (or a similar) procedure, you will be pleasantly surprised at how well your list will come together. You will find that projection and tracking figures finally jibe with your company’s delivery and response realities.

Now you are what professionals call a mailer, and your motto can now be: "Hey, don't ever change (but if you do... We Know Where You Are!)"

Return to NCOA and ACS Services page 1
Get more information at NCOA and ACS Services page 2