HOW TO CLEAN UP YOUR MAILING LIST DATABASE If you manage your mailing list on computer, the U.S. Postal Service will upgrade your mailing list for you, FOR FREE. The main service is to (A) validate/correct all 5-digit zip codes, adding zip-plus-4 wherever possible. They will also (B) validate the street or PO Box delivery address for deliverability, and (C) standardize the entry for delivery addresses, city, and state. There is also a service to (D) "clean" your mailing list by doing changes-of-address for you -- the post office knows where everybody in the United States has moved to (as long as they've been notified!), and if the person on your list has moved, it might be cheaper to have your mailing list updated by computer than for you to pay 25 cents for each address correction when you do a mass mailing. Unfortunately, service "D" is not free and the United States Postal Service (hereafter, USPS) doesn't offer it directly. You CAN, however, hire a USPS franchise to do it for you. More on this later. HOW TO START: Contact your local branch post office and ask for your "account representive." Every business in the U.S. has an account rep, even if you never go to the post office. You do have to be incorporated to use this service. The PO will tell you the account rep's name. Ask for a copy of Postal Service Form #5603, "Request for free ZIP+4 coding of address files on diskettes," and assistance in updating your mailing list. The form contains an application request and an instruction page, telling you how to proceed. The document you're reading right now describes this service in a little more detail. WHAT'S NEEDED: You must have 300 names (mininum) on your mailing list, submitted on any standard-size diskette (3.5-, 5.25-, and 8-inch disks are all acceptable). The diskettes submitted can be created on most computer operating systems. Nearly all MS-DOS or CP/M formatted disks are acceptable; some Apple disks are okay, but Macintosh is not. The mailing list must be in a true "record" format, i.e., one line per record, NOT the output text as it usually appears on the mailing label, with 3 or 4 lines per entry. (If it's not evident yet, a "record" is a single entry created with a data management program, not your favorite word processor, containing the name, delivery address, city, state, zip, phone, id numbers, date of birth, and similar information you may require.) Each record must be terminated with a newline, usually a carriage return/linefeed combination. The datafile must contain FIXED- LENGTH fields and FIXED-LENGTH records. If your records are delimited with anything other than a carriage return/linefeed combination (0D 0A hex), it can still be processed, but you should indicate this on the request form. Only 1 file may be on each disk. If the file is too long to fit on a single diskette, it may be spread over multiple disks. The file will be overwritten unless you supply a blank, formatted disk for the output file. The file you submit may be in either mixed upper-and-lower case letters, or in all upper case (solid caps). If the output file (the one the USPS sends back after updating it) must contain mixed upper-and-lower case letters, the post office can only do zip code update (A), and delivery validation (B), above. If you also want the delivery address standardized (C), the file must be submitted in all caps. HOW DO THESE CORRECTIONS DIFFER? (A) ZIP code correction and encoding with ZIP+4 If your input city/state/zip is HOLLYWOODE, CALIF 90082 correcting the zip will change it to: 90028 adding zip-plus-4 will change it to: 90028-8521 "HOLLYWOODE" will remain misspelled. (B) Validation of the delivery address. This means that the street address will be checked to see that it is a deliverable address, not a vacant lot. Validation of the address does NOT insure that the addressee (e.g., JOHN JONES) lives there. The USPS pays no attention to the name of the recipient. All it does is confirm that someone receives mail at that address. Any addresses that aren't legitimate will be indicated in report returned with your diskette. (C) Standardize spelling of delivery address and/or the city and state. This means that if your input data is: APARTMENT 230 5505 SUNSETTE <- note misspelled street name HOLLYWOODE, CALIF etc. <- note misspelled city name The output data will be: 5505 W SUNSET BLVD #230 <- standardized delivery address HOLLYWOOD, CA etc. <- standard city/state spelling Remember, standardization (including spelling correction) is only available if your input file is in upper case. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: The presence of Canadian and foreign addresses mixed in with the U.S. addresses in your datafile makes no difference. If the zip code field contains Canadian and other foreign postal codes, that's okay, too. The USPS will not correct or validate these records, but their presence is not a problem. The input file cannot contain any special document- formatting or control characters (remember, this is a datafile, not a document file). Nulls (00 hex) are okay if they are used to pad unused characters in the fields, though spaces (20 hex) are more common. As stated previously, the critical thing is that the fields be fixed-length, i.e., all fields must begin at the same character position in each record. You will be asked to provide the length of the address-related fields, and the character position each field begins at. The application form specifies the maximum length for certain fields. For the zip code, it specifies that the maximum length be 5 characters, but this is an apparent error. If you have already started using zip-plus-4 and set up your zip code field to accept 9 or 10 characters, or more, the USPS will still process this field properly. For those who need a perpetual reminder, NEVER send in your original or only copy of your datafile. Send the U.S. Postal Service a duplicate of the datafile. Ideally, you should have back-up copies of an important mailing list (and all major programs and documents) in several locations, in case of fire or an electrical disaster. The application form specifies that the diskettes you send them "must be in the 'copy' or transfer mode, not the 'backup' or save/restore mode." This primarily applies to MS-DOS or similar users, who use a back-up program which encodes or compresses the data when performing the backup. The USPS wants normal, printable characters, not encoded or compressed data. (However, a technical support specialist told me that, despite this admonition, they WILL accept backed-up/compressed copies if created with the BACKUP utility for MS-DOS version 3.1 or higher.) The USPS promises that "all diskettes will be processed in strict confidence." You will mail the disk(s) to a special office in Memphis, Tennessee. Processing will take about 3 weeks. And again, this service is FREE. WHAT ABOUT CHANGES OF ADDRESS? The USPS will NOT do changes-of-address (COAs) for you, since they ignore the name field(s) of your file. However, there is a way to get this done. The Postal Service leases COA information to private vendors for a fee, in a franchise-type of operation. The private corporations are strictly regulated in how they handle the data provided them by both the consumers and the USPS. You simply contact the nearest NCOA Service, whose name and address can be provided by your postal account rep. The NCOA service corporation will charge you according to the size of the mailing list, and various auxillary services you may request. CHICAGO-AREA NCOA SERVICES: The following are some NCOA (National Change Of Address) services located in metro Chicago. There are others across the country; call your local postal account rep for names/addresses of ones in your state or region. May & Speh, Inc. Attn: Dale Ibis 18 W. 100 22nd Street Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181-4403 Tel. (312) 620-8060 Metro Mail Corp. 360 E. 22nd Street Lombard, IL 60148-4924 Tel. (312) 620-3196 R.R. Donnelley & Sons Attn: Steve Sieloff 1815 S. Prairie Ave. Chicago, IL 60616-1391 Tel. (312) 326-7166 Direct Marketing Technologies 955 American Lane Schaumburg, IL 60173-4843 Tel. (312) 843-5600 Finally, if you have any further questions about technical requirements related to datafile structure, disk format, etc., or other specs required for this service, please contact: Val Pailloz Marketing and Communications Central Regional Office, U.S. Postal Service 433 W. Van Buren Chicago, IL 60699-0832 Tel. (312) 765-5183 Thanks to Val for her assistance in preparing this document. Written by Eric Pement (rev. 10/26/88).