Signed, Sealed & Delivered?
Scenario: You are dropping 5,000, one-ounce, letter-sized mailers. You want to send them First Class at a presorted rate of .32¢ a piece. If you do not follow the Move Update mandate, you will have to mail 5,000 letters as single pieces at a rate of .42¢ each. And if you were going to use the Standard Mail presorted rate of about .22¢ a piece, you’ll be paying $1,000 more in postage.
Did you know that over 40 million Americans move each year? How many of those addresses are updated in your company’s mailing list? Just look at your pile of Undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail and you’ll soon realize that a significant percent of your regular mailings is wasted.
In an effort to reduce undeliverable mail, the Postal Service is implementing new Move Update standards. This mandate goes into effect on November 23, 2008 and applies to all Standard Mail—letters, flats, parcels and Not Flat-Machinables—as well as automation-rate and presort-rate First-Class Mail.
Bottom line: Mailers must begin using addresses that were updated within the previous 95 days. For a mailer to quality for drop on November 23rd all addresses would have been updated no earlier than August 20th of this year.
The Move Update standards will help reduce the number of mailpieces that require forwarding, returned or disposed of as waste by periodically matching address records with customer-filed change-of-address orders.
“While the Move Update mandate does require a little more effort, the benefits are valuable,” says Laura Szady, Mailpiece Quality Control Specialist, BFC. The new standards will improve the percent of deliverable addresses dramatically, resulting in the mailpiece reaching the intended recipient. “This could impact direct mail response rates in a positive way.”
How to get ready: Update your mailing lists. There are a few authorized methods for updating your addresses. BFC uses the National Change of Address (NCOA) process. The NCOA process improves mail deliverability by providing mailers with current, standardized, delivery point coded addresses for individual, family and business moves. As a certified licensee of NCOA, BFC offers this service to all customers to help streamline their direct marketing efforts. With a little advanced planning, BFC customers can be assured their direct marketing strategy will be implemented on schedule.
A note to customers using NCOA for Move Update.
Customers are required to fill out a PAF (Processing Acknowledgement Form) once a year with each mailing vendor per USPS regulations. Ask your BFC representative for more information.
Other authorized methods for Standard Mail include:
- FASTforward MLOCR processing (letter mail only)
- OneCode ACS (Address Change Service) in conjunction with an Intelligent Mail barcode and business entity ID
- Address Change Service used with an ACS participant code and an appropriate on-piece ancillary service endorsement
- Use of an appropriate on-piece ancillary service endorsement without ACS
Exception to the rule: Mailpieces using an alternative addressing format such as “Current Resident” or “Postal Customer” are not subject to the Move Update standards.