313 Postal Addressing Standards
32 Publication 28
personal/professional, and department or division. Consequently for the
business-to-business mailer, the scope of address standardization and list
maintenance and correction becomes much more complex.
By establishing preferred format or data element location guidelines, defined
character lengths, standard abbreviations, and a progression of compression
steps, a process has been created that now enables mailers to uniformly
condense business address components to any practical length, depending
on the purpose and the need to abbreviate the data. The use of standardized
abbreviations and logical compression steps is intended to facilitate the
computer-based merge/purge process and also Postal Service automation
equipment and industry address matching services, including CASS, MASS,
ZIP+4, and NCOA
Link
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The mailer has full discretion in the use of standard abbreviations and
compression guidelines to optimize computer data storage and output to a
mailpiece. There is no intent to mandate the use of these abbreviations or
guidelines if the mailer prefers the full spelling.
313 Business Address Standardization Factors
Address standardization has the potential to improve many phases of the
business-to-business mail process — from merge/purge to delivery. The
following are specific problem areas these standards can address.
313.1 Costly Inefficiencies in the Merge/Purge Process
It is hard to identify and eliminate duplicate addresses when address data is
presented in varying formats, i.e., when abbreviation and compression
tactics are applied randomly or multiple data element combinations are used.
313.2 Costly Poor Address Hygiene
Businesses often prefer to use “prestige” or “vanity” addresses and
occasionally use multiple versions of their firm name, depending on their
market needs. They also apply differing abbreviation and compression
tactics. As a result, match rates against Postal Service address improvement
products, i.e., NCOA, Address Change Service (ACS), and ZIP+4, are low.
313.3 Costly Missed Opportunities for Barcoding Discounts
Because of inconsistencies in business address formats, business
addresses often do not match against ZIP+4 data used to produce a
barcode. Business-to-business mailers find it harder to take full advantage of
new automation and barcoding discounts.
313.4 Costly Non-Deliverability
Inconsistent addressing tactics or missing address elements due to varying
compression methods often result in undeliverable mail. Delivery of mail within
an organization may also be impaired if internal mailstops are not part of the
address. In this context mailstop refers to a unique routing code used by a
company for internal mail delivery. It does not include the traditional information,
such as Accounts Payable Branch, or Attn To:. Example: Mailstop ABC 456.