Address Quality Solutions

Introduction

CASS is important for anyone dealing with U.S. addresses. Why?

Standardization

CASS will provide standardized addresses, which enable much more accurate de-duping for any marketing or fulfillment database. Name and address are often the only legal option for uniquely identifying customers, so proper standardization is crucial.

Various address corrections can be done during the CASS matching process, so that even incorrect or incomplete addresses can be matched, and the most complete and up-to-date address is returned:

Depending on various uniqueness of other address elements, ZIP codes can be corrected, misspelled street names matched and fixed, apartment and suite numbers and designators changed to USPS standard values, and missing or incorrect pre- and post-directionals and street suffixes corrected;
LACS^Link (Locatable Address Conversion System) provides the new address for address that have been converted from rural-style addresses to street-style addresses, typically for 911 purposes; and
Suite^Link provides secondary numbers for firms when missing on the original input address.

CASS provides many additional fields providing information about the matching (return codes) and lookup values (such as eLOT, carrier route, ZIP+4, county, etc.).

Data Quality

Large enterprises often maintain multiple address databases for different parts of the Company. Over the last decade, having a “single view of the customer” has become a major objective for companies that have that issue. Since identifiers for each customer may be different in each database, the easiest way of linking these together would be using a standardized address.

Postal Delivery and Discounts

In addition, anyone mailing with the USPS must have a valid 11-digit ZIP (ZIP code, ZIP+4, and delivery point) produced by CASS-certified software in order to receive Carrier Route or Automation discounts. The difference in price can amount to many thousands of dollars for large mailings.

Why should I NCOA my database?

Approximately 10% of the U.S. population moved in 2018. 1 This means that a good portion of address records became incorrect or inactive in that year. For example, if a service provider had a mailing containing 1,000 contacts then, based on the 10% statistic, the potential existed that 100 pieces of that mailing would not have been delivered to the intended recipient. And that is just one year.

NCOA^Link makes available current change of address information, improving the deliverability rates for mail campaigns. Using TA with NCOA^Link will:

Identify and correct addressing errors before the mail enters the United States Postal Service.
Standardize addresses to meet USPS mail standards.
Increase USPS discounts.
Receive return codes that indicate a match was obtained and are accompanied by either a new address or an undeliverable status, helping Clients better analyze their data.
Save the mailer thousands of dollars that would have been spent on postage and wasted materials (helping their “green” status) resulting from undelivered as addressed (UAA) mail.

In addition valuable customer names that would have been lost will be updated so that communication can continue.

On-Prem Versus Web-Based

TA is available as an on-prem product, which can be installed and run in different environments such as Linux and Windows.

TA is also available as a web-version (usa.trueaddress.com). The TA web-based parameter builder is intended to provide a ‘quick start’ for lower-volume users. Contact Window Book’s Client Services group (see Contact Us)for more information on the web version of TA.