The mailing industry has had access to address quality tools for decades. We can standardize addresses, compare them with change-of-address records, verify delivery points, receive electronic notices when mail cannot be delivered, and validate information as a customer types it into a form.

Good news! All that technology and know-how have finally eradicated the issues with undelivered mail!

Just kidding. The USPS continues to report they handle over 4 billion pieces of UAA mail every year, even with overall mail volume declining.

Companies still send mail to people who moved, addresses missing apartment numbers, vacant buildings, duplicate households, and locations that customer service thought they corrected three months ago. In the mail center, returned mail accumulates in tubs and trays until someone handles it (or doesn’t), and the same bad addresses appear in the next mailing.

Why is that?

While they have plenty of address quality tools, data, and reports, organizations often lack a system that ensures permanent corrections and traces bad addresses back to the operations that created them.

A Toolbox Is Not a System

Consider what is already available. CASS-certified software improves postal coding and address matching. NCOALink compares files against permanent change-of-address records before a mailing. Address Change Service (ACS) supplies change-of-address information and reasons for non-delivery. Proprietary change of address (PCOA) databases snag movers who don’t file with the USPS. Real-time validation catches incomplete or malformed addresses at entry.

Most companies use these tools as isolated steps. A mail service provider runs NCOALink before a job. A web team validates data entered on an online form. The mail center downloads ACS records. Customer service changes the CRM. Billing maintains its own database. Marketing uploads a list acquired from somewhere no one can quite remember.

Even with each group doing its job, addresses can still be wrong. Many entities touch the data, but no one owns the result. Predictably, bad address records enjoy long careers as they move from system to system and cost the organization money.

Companies Manufacture Bad Addresses Every Day

Some address problems come from customers who move and do not tell the companies with whom they do business. Many other mailing address issues are created within the organization.

A customer mistypes their address into a form that accepts anything. A call center employee forgets to ask for the unit number. Two systems exchange data, but one truncates a field that the other needs.

Then the mail center receives the file. It can correct postal formatting, identify some moves, flag duplicates, and suppress records that cannot be coded. That work matters, but it happens near the end. The mail center is treating the fever. The infection occurred several systems earlier.

What looks like a solution or “best practice” really isn’t. The mail center fixes the file as best it can and produces the mailing. No one asks which form, vendor, call center screen, or database supplied the defects. The mail has to go out. There’s no time to investigate. New bad addresses enter the organization. Rinse and repeat until it’s time for another clean-up project.

This common practice is like mopping the floor without checking why water is pouring through the ceiling.

The Feedback Loop Is Where Good Intentions Go to Disappear

Mailers can collect detailed information about what happened after a piece was mailed. ACS can report a change of address or a reason for non-delivery for nearly every piece that went astray.

Then what? Too often, the correction stays with the provider or mail center, or they could pass it along to the client in a spreadsheet, a job report, or a portal. The client may even send it to someone who can update the data or do the research, but that’s never at the top of anyone’s to-do list. At every handoff, the odds of securing a permanent correction get worse.

Other organizational processes or habits can disrupt data correction actions. A successful update may fix the billing system, for instance, but the marketing platform does not change. Or an evening data feed may restore the old address, and those earlier updates just vanish into the night.

To really get a handle on undeliverable mail, an effective address-quality program should be a closed loop. Every correction should have a destination, an owner, a status, and a record of what happened. Recurring defects should lead investigators back to their source.

Mail Service Providers Have an Opening

Mail service providers see address problems across clients, files, campaigns, systems, and time. They know which records fail CASS processing, which moves appear through NCOALink, which pieces generate ACS notices, and which defects return month after month.

With the information they already have, providers can turn address quality into a managed service:

•Return standardized correction and non-delivery reason codes in a load-ready format.

•Track whether clients accepted, rejected, or failed to apply each correction.

•Report defect rates by file source, business unit, application, vendor, or intake channel.

•Identify repeat offenders, including records corrected before and later reintroduced.

•Set thresholds that trigger an investigation rather than another routine cleanup.

•Hold periodic data-quality reviews with marketing, operations, and IT.

This moves the provider from the role of list processor to the more valuable position of data steward.

Corporations Need an Address Control System

An organization needs ownership and control. Name one leader accountable for enterprise-wide address quality. Assign responsibility to individuals who manage systems that capture or alter addresses. Decide which application holds the trusted record. Set rules for conflicts and exceptions. Require correction data to flow back from mailing operations and providers.

Then measure the process and track everything:

•The percentage of addresses validated at entry

•NCOALink changes applied to the system of record

•ACS corrections received, loaded, rejected, and unresolved

•UAA rate by source system and reason

•Repeat defects after a prior correction

•Time from reported problem to enterprise update

•Production, postage, research, and remailing costs

•Revenue, payment delays, and service contacts tied to failed delivery

The Problem Is Solvable

The opportunity is to connect the pieces. Validate addresses when they are entered. Monitor them as they age. Capture postal feedback. Update every system that depends on the address data record. Trace recurring errors to the operation that created them. Report the cost and the correction rate to someone with the authority to act.

If an organization can track a mail piece across the country, it should be able to track a bad address back across the hall.

Mike Porter at Print/Mail Consultants and PMC Content Services creates content that helps attract and retain customers for companies in the mailing and document industry and he assists companies as they integrate new technology. He welcomes questions from Mailing Systems Technology readers. Reach out to him at www.pmccontentservices.com. Follow @PMCmike on X or send him a connection request on LinkedIn.