Anchor Computer

Offset Postage Increase with Address Hygiene

It’s official – the USPS® postage increase has gone into effect on January 22, 2012. This is the second postage increase approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission in less than a year. Most direct mailers will see an average increase of about 2.1% or between $0.004 and $0.001 per mail piece.

Despite the increased cost of mailing, marketers see the value in keeping direct mail as part of their 2012 marketing program. In fact, a study performed in 2011 reported that 50% of consumers still prefer receiving direct mail to any other channel. Finding a solution to decrease mailing costs versus reallocating marketing budgets has been a challenge.

Request a FREE DATABASE EVALUATION REPORT to see how Anchor’s SuperCleansing Platinum Bundle can help offset the postage increase and SAVE YOUR DIRECT MAIL BUDGET.

Optimize the delivery of your mailing list using a combination of Anchor’s postal processing services, all bundled together into one “budget saving” solution.  

Anchor’s SuperCleansing Platinum Bundle includes:

NCOALink^® – Process your mailing lists against the 48-month NCOA^Link® dataset of approximately 160 million change-of-address records filed with the USPS^®. Update mailing lists, including individuals, families and businesses that have moved.

DPV^® (Delivery Point Validation, confirms an address exists and is a USPS^® delivery point) – DPV^® allows you to eliminate costs by not mailing to non-existent addresses.

LACS^Link®  (Locatable Address Conversion System, 911 Address Conversion Tool) - Converts rural style addresses to city style addresses, improving deliverability.

CASS^TM (Coding Accuracy Support System) – Improves the Address Standardization, ZIP^® Correction, ZIP+4^® Appending, Carrier-Route Coding, Delivery Point Coding, Error Message Code, CASS^TM Report and NDI Report.

DSF^2®  (Identifies Deliverable Addresses and Specific Address Attributes) – Allows you to identify business versus residential delivery points, as well as, vacant and seasonal addresses.

AAE (Anchor Address Enhancements) – Improve addresses that cannot be ZIP + 4^® coded, resulting in improved deliverability. By using an individual name and special matching logic on the address to locate a similar address in large reference file databases, we can determine which address elements need to be changed to make the record ZIP+4^® codable. Verify an actual address exists down to an apartment or suite number. AAE also adds missing secondary address information.

Deceased/Prison Suppress  – Eliminate deceased individuals and individuals with prison addresses from mailings, prior to a promotion.

Merge Purge – Identify duplicate records in your database, based upon your marketing criteria.  Our program goes beyond name and address comparison and incorporates additional data matching elements for increased accuracy, across several different files. Any data in your file such as: Social Security Number, Gender or Telephone Number may be used for your duplicate identification process. Matches can be based on unique individual or household levels.

 Pricing of these products and services is neither established, controlled, nor approved by the United States Postal Service®.  The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service®:  USPS, United States Postal Service, ZIP, ZIP Code, ZIP + 4, LACS^Link, NCOA^Link, DPV, DSF² and CASS.

Every year approximately forty-four million Americans move their place of residence and/or business, but their old addresses often remain in the mailer’s computers. As a result, mailings continue to go to old addresses and not the new ones. USPS® estimates that at least 8% of all Standard Mail™ is undeliverable because of incorrect addresses. This means lost opportunities, lost sales, and wasted money.

There is a solution. The NCOA system makes available current change of address information that can help reduce your undeliverable mail. Addressing errors are identified and corrected before mail enters the mail-stream. Mailers use NCOA to save thousands of dollars that would have been spent on wasted materials and postage. In addition, valuable customer names that would have been lost have been updated to receive current and future mailings.

Use of the USPS® NCOALinkTM program reduces costs of labor, postage and materials. Unfortunately, this is news to some companies and senior managers who have yet to realize the ROI benefits of this worthy program. Presented herein are two reference tools you can share with clients and prospects: a Return On Investment Guide and a Case History.

ROI Guide

The USPS® has stated that the average NCOA match rate is approximately 4.1%. That translates to 41,000 move changes for a 1,000,000 record file. The match rate not only includes recognized address changes but also closed PO Boxes, foreign moves and moves with no forwarding address. When associated postage and material costs related to these factors are recognized as well as non ZIP + 4® coded addresses, one begins to conceptualize the value of this service.

Rule of Thumb

Following are average percentages of key NCOALink elements:

Case Study

This study is presented as an example of the savings potential to small file owners that use Standard Mail™ A class mail, in this case an owner with 82,153 records.

Mailers using NCOA will save thousands of dollars that would have been spent on wasted materials and postage that results from undelivered as addressed mail. The NCOA System makes available current change of address information that will reduce undeliverable mail. Addressing errors are identified and corrected before the mail enters the USPS®. Mailers will also receive a quicker response to an offer since it will go directly to the new address in the case of a move. Cash flow will also improve as a direct result of reaching a customer who has moved. In addition valuable customer names that would have been lost will be updated so that communication can continue.

For more information about the NCOALinkTM process, please click here.

Anchor Computer is a non-exclusive licensee of the United States Postal Service® for NCOALink™, DSF2™, DPV™, & LACSLink™.