Did you ever do a direct mailing project and get hand-fulls back because of bad addresses. Just think about all the money wasted on printing, mailing labor and postage. You don’t have to have that headache any more with a NCOAlink update. NCOA stands for National Change of Address. It is a database kept by the U.S. Post Office that has every address in the United States. When someone moves they give the USPS their new address and the National Change of Address database is updated with the new address. The USPS issues a license to companies to have access to this database for the purpose of list hygiene. We are one of the companies who can use the NCOAlink update database.
When our customers send us a list we run their list against the National Change of Address Database and if someone has moved we most likely can change to the correct address. There are a few exceptions and if we cannot clean up a particular address or addresses, we send the customer a list of the ones that cannot be mailed with codes to tell them why that address is bad. We can also take out any duplicates. If we are printing, we do not print until we have the correct quantity on the list. That is an advantage of doing the printing and mailing all under one roof. Our roof is a big roof..we offer, graphic design, digital and offset printing and direct mail.
I had a customer send me a list by accident of, what they thought were deliverable addresses, we cleaned up the list of about 8000 and were able to give them back over 2000 good addresses. This was a non-profit donor list so getting back over 2000 meant a lot to them in terms of their direct mail and possible donations. Make sure you are not wasting money by having an NCOAlink update on your list. The USPS requires a list clean up before each mailing.
