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This page appears courtesy of Snow & Associates, an international research organization dedicated to helping educational, fraternal and professional institutions maintain better information on their alumni/ae, communicate more effectively with them, and relocate those who are lost. Click HERE to visit our home page.
The National Change of Address service is based on a concept which is very attractive to institutions which send mail to large numbers of constituents: how to make address corrections before sending mail.Remember that many companies offer the service, as non-exclusive licensees of the US Postal Service. Features and prices vary from company to company. It is always wise to compare sevices and prices before choosing one. Click HERE for information from the USPS on NCOA services and companies that provide them. Many users find that NCOA is useful for obtaining new addresses for alumni who have recently moved, and filed a forwarding order with their local post office. In most cases, it is far less expensive to pay for NCOA processing (usually $5 or less per thousand records) before mailing, than to pay for return and forward postage after mailing. However, NCOA processing is usually NOT very helpful in finding current addresses for alumni who move without filing a forwarding order, or alumni who are already lost ... especially in cases where they ave been lost for several years. NCOA updates are linked only the last known address; alumni who have moved more than once usually cannot be found using NCOA. When you are ready to add NCOA data to your records, it is important to set up relational databases to compare the new NCOA data with your existing data before making permanent changes to your files. As a general rule, we recommend that you assume that your current records are accurate, unless the NCOA output file clearly demonstrates otherwise. Another feature often offered with NCOA processing is "nixie" flagging, which is intended to identify undeliverable addresses before mail is sent. Again, in theory this is less expensive than printing and sending mail which would be returned. However, users give mixed reviews to this feature, sometimes finding that mail sent to some addresses flagged as "nixies" can actually be delivered. If your institution is primarily interested in saving postage, you may not want to send mail to addresses flagged as "nixies." If your institution is primarily interested in keeping in touch with as many alumni as possible, you may prefer to send mail to these addresses, and wait to see if mail is actually returned. Yet another feature often included with NCOA processing is USPS "address standardization." This feature should be used with caution. Many addresses which do not meet official USPS standardization requirements are actually deliverable in real life. In addition, official USPS address formats sometimes conflict with the conventions used by institutions which use the service. We recommend that a member of your staff carefully review addresses flagged for standardization problems before making permanent changes to your records. Finally, Zip+4 coding is often included with NCOA processing. Most users find this feature useful for adding extentions to zip codes in their databases, whether or not the rest of an address has changed. While fewer problems are reported with this feature than with nixie flagging or USPS standardization formats, we suggest filtering Zip+4 data before adding them to your records, to make sure that the rest of the address is the same, before adding the 4-digit extention to the zip code. Used with caution, NCOA processing can be helpful to many institutions which send mail to large numbers of alumni. However, it is important to take a conservative approach, and review NCOA data carefully, before making major changes to your files, rather than automatically uploading NCOA data directly to your database.
Click HERE to request more info about NCOA from Snow & Associates.
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