News
 How
to Improve Address Quality
What are some of the best practices for improving
address quality? A new guide created by a U.S.
Postal Service technical committee details what
direct marketers can do to improve their address
quality. Here are some of the group’s suggestions.
The purpose of the guide is to find a way to reduce
undeliverable-as-addressed-mail (UAA). Here are a
few topics the group identifies as the best way to
improve data quality and dramatically slash
undeliverable-as-addressed mail (UAA).
* Mail Address Validation involves using an approved
industry process or tool to validate the correctness
of the address prior to submitting it to the USPS
for verification. The current practice for
validating mail addresses involves using only CASS
Certified™ software. This is often done days, weeks,
or even months before submitting the addresses for
USPS verification. The lapse in time and limited
application of data cleansing often results in
addresses that are non-deliverable.
Best Practice: Best practices for mail validation
would include implementing a just-in-time approach
to validating mail addresses. This would involve
CASS certified software, DPV™ and LACSLink ™ .
* Timeliness of the data includes meeting and
exceeding the requirements for updating name and
address files with respect to coding, address
accuracy and move updating. The current practice –
with the improved understanding of addressing, it
has been determined that the frequency and process
for performing CASS updates has increased. In
addition, other tools to enable improved addressing
capabilities have been developed and provided to the
mailing community.
Best Practice: The best practices for data
timeliness include performing address hygiene
activities as close as possible to the time of
mailing. Based on move update statistics, 400 to 500
of every one million names and address records can
be expected to be recorded as moves. So, if the file
is updated three weeks before the date of mailing,
about 10,000 out of a million may require additional
work to deliver. While requirements may be 90 or 180
days before mailing, mailers may be able with
special efforts to do much better than this.
|
|
|
