What You Should Use to Keep Up With Your Moving Customers – ACS, NCOA, or FASTforward^®
By Buddy Spiegel
Director of Address Products, Anchor Computer, Inc.

What are the acronyms?

ACS (Address Change Service) - ACS is an electronic equivalent to receiving the same information a mailer would be provided by using Ancillary endorsements. ACS is a post-mailing service, the mailer receives the new addresses only after the mailing takes place.

NCOA (National Change of Address) – NCOA makes 36 months of change-of-address information available to mailers thus reducing undeliverable mail. The service is made available via a network of United States Postal Service licensees. NCOA is a pre-mailing service, the mailer receives new addresses before a mailing takes place.

FASTforward^® – Mailing List Correction (MLC) for FASTforward^® is a hardware/software combination containing 8 months of change-of-address information. This technology is licensed by the United States Postal Service to service bureaus, or other organizations for their internal use. Like NCOA, MLC is a pre-mailing service.

Why are these services important?

Deliverability of the mail is an essential ingredient for success in the direct mail business. Given that approximately twenty percent of the population moves annually, it is a chore for mailers to keep up with their moving customers. The United States Postal Service (United States Postal Service) receives in excess of 40 million changes of address orders annually from individuals, families, and businesses that moved. Mailers who want to know when their customers move may find out electronically before they mail by using services offered by licensees of the United States Postal Service: National Change of Address (NCOA) or FASTforward^®. The United States Postal Service Address Change Service (ACS) will inform mailers of new addresses after a mailing. Mailers may use ancillary endorsements and receive the new address information via hard copy returns.

Where does the data come from?

Knowledge of the underlying data flow will help mailers use ACS, NCOA, and FASTforward^® to their maximum potential. The process starts with a postal customer filing a change of address order, commonly referred to as a PS Form 3575 by the United States Postal Service. This order is reviewed by the letter carrier who delivers the mail to the "old" address. After the move is validated by the local letter carrier it is passed to one of the 200+ Computer Forwarding System Sites (CFS) whose job it is to enter the data on the 3575 into their computer system and subsequently forward the mail to the customer’s "new" address. These CFS sites are open 7 days a week, for data entry and mail forwarding. As a byproduct of the data being entered into the local CFS computer system, the National Customer Support Center of the United States Postal Service, located in Memphis TN, receives the data CFS entered on a daily basis.

On a weekly basis, the NCOA licensees receive update transactions that they apply to the NCOA database. The NCSC ends their week with the data entered at the CFS sites on Tuesday. They then edit the transactions and update their internal copy of the NCOA database normally on Wednesday. Consequently, they forward the update to the licensees on Thursday for receipt on Friday. By Monday morning, an updated NCOA database is available to the licensees to process customer files. All but the last five days of changes of address orders are included in this updated database.

In a similar manner, the weekly address changes transactions are passed along to the FASTforward^® department, where an entirely new database is built and a replacement CD is sent to the licensees on a weekly basis.

How does NCOA work?

Mailers who avail themselves of the NCOA process have the opportunity to update their files, prior to mailing, by using the services of an NCOA licensee. These licensees receive customer files from mailers, and first process them through CASS certified address matching software, which performs ZIP correction, appends the customer file with standardized, ZIP+4 and delivery point code data – all of which improve deliverability. Next, the licensees pass the customer names and standardized address against the NCOA database using United States Postal Service specified and approved name and address matching logic. When an NCOA match occurs, the new address is further appended to the customer record. An NCOA match can result in a new address being provided, or notification that a PO BOX was closed, or the customer moved and left no address, or the customer moved out of the country.

In cases where there was a near match, but not close enough due to the conservative nature of the NCOA logic, optional NCOA NIXIE codes can be applied to the record. The NIXIE codes explain why a candidate record could not be matched to a record on the NCOA file. For example, a NIXIE code could indicate that there was an NCOA record on the file at the same address as a customer record, but the first name was not close enough to make a match. See additional examples in table "X". When a record is NCOA NIXIE coded, no new address is provided to the mailer. Based on the purpose of the mailing and the specific NIXIE codes, the mailer may then make an informed decision as to what mailing action he/she should take: mail separately with an ancillary endorsement, mail normally, or suppress.

Does it pay to process with NCOA?

What does NCOA cost on a per hit basis? There are 23 commercial licensees of NCOA, all of which are free to determine their fees. Many of the NCOA licensees have a minimum charge for a job. Excluding this minimum, if a licensee for example charged $2.00 per thousand, and the match rate against NCOA is 4%, then the cost for each new address would be $0.05. This is a very inexpensive way to get the new address.

Let’s examine a typical NCOA process for a job. Our experience for most mailers indicates that the average match rate is approximately 4%. If a mailing consists of one-million pieces, 40,000 name and address records will match to NCOA, of which approximately 36,000 will be given new forwarding addresses and 4,000 will be dropped as undeliverable. If the cost of the mailing is $500 per thousand, approximately $15,000 would go to no audience or, at best, a part would reach the audience. With NCOA, your mailing reaches the intended prospect and keeps track of where your buyers have gone.

Consequently, you save money and make more money. These increases are difficult to estimate but should be considered.

How does ACS work?

In contrast to NCOA, address changes received via ACS by a mailer occur after the mailing. Mailers participate in the program at no enrollment charge by contacting the United States Postal Service National Customer Support Center in Memphis TN, 1-800-331-5746. Mailers are assigned a participant code, and agree to format their mail piece in a manner in which it can easily be recognized as an ACS mailing by the clerks at the CFS sites and the Postal Carriers. An additional line, above the name and address information, in the address block identifies the mailer and contains the participant code assigned by the NCSC. An optional (and highly recommended) second line contains a key line that the mailer should use to identify the particular customer. When a mail piece is undeliverable as addressed, it is forwarded to one of the 200+ CFS sites for processing. There are many options under the ACS program depending on the class of mail and the endorsement used. For additional details ask for a copy of Publication 8 that contains all the details on the ACS program by calling the United States Postal Service NCSC, 1-800-331-5746 and ask for the ACS department.

Mailers will not get all their address corrections electronically, but will get most of them back from the United States Postal Service electronically if they use ACS. Mailers specify the frequency with which they would like their changes from the NCSC (daily, weekly, monthly, on request), and also the format they want to receive the data in (tape, disk, cartridge, etc.). ACS also provides NIXIE information to the mailer, but the meaning of the NIXIE in ACS is not the same as NIXIE in NCOA. In ACS, a NIXIE code is assigned when the mail is undeliverable for reasons other than a customer move. A few examples of ACS nixes are: attempted not known, insufficient address, vacant, and refused.

What does ACS cost? The current charge for an electronic address correction for ACS fulfillment is $0.20 per record. There will still be some manual corrections, and when the class of mail and endorsement require payment, the charge for each one received is $0.50. If 80 percent of the address corrections came through ACS, and 20 percent via hard copy were chargeable, the weighted cost per correction would be $0.26, or more than 5 times more costly than NCOA. The United States Postal Service will bill the mailer for the ACS records fulfilled.

How does FASTforward^® work?

MLC for FASTforward^® functions in a manner similar to NCOA. Mailing lists are electronically compared to a change-of-address file, and when a match on name and address occurs, a new address is provided to the mailer. This technology is available under license from the United States Postal Service to qualified organizations.

FASTforward^® was originally designed as a solution for presort houses and firms having multi-line optical character readers (MLOCR). FASTforward^® is a United States Postal Service developed "black-box", or a special tamperproof personal computer containing the most recent 6 months of change of address data in an encrypted form. Access to this device physically and electronically is controlled by a United States Postal Service license agreement. The United States Postal Service expanded the role of the FASTforward^® device to list processors in conjunction with the Move Update requirement, which went into effect July 1st, 1997. This provided mailers with another alternative to ACS and NCOA as an electronic method of obtaining new addresses for movers.

Service bureaus, letter shops, and other third parties for the reselling of mailing list matching services and mailers for their in-house use may apply to become licensees of the United States Postal Service for Mailing List Correction for FASTforward^®. Third party pricing for the FASTforward^® processing is not controlled by the United States Postal Service in any manner.

The annual cost of the FASTforward^® license by the United States Postal Service is $10,000. The software to interface with the "black-box" can be licensed from a number of United States Postal Service certified software interface providers, or can be developed in-house if a firm so chooses to undertake the development effort.

FASTforward^® contains only 6 months of address changes and does not provide NCOA NIXIE footnotes. Either a record on a mailing list matches to FASTforward^® or it doesn’t. When a record does not match, the mailer does not know for sure whether a customer didn’t move, or if there was a record on the FASTforward^® database that was close, but not close enough for a United States Postal Service approved match.

Differences between ACS, NCOA, and FASTforward^®

• NCOA/FASTforward^® are pre-mailing services, ACS is a post-mailing service
• NCOA/FASTforward^® do not require changing your on-piece address block, ACS does
• NCOA address changes are based on a 36 month database, FASTforward^® is a 6 month database, ACS is based on 18 months
• NCOA/FASTforward^® can resolve multiple customer moves, ACS may
• NCOA/FASTforward^® are generally more cost effective solutions than ACS
• NCOA NIXIE’s are extremely valuable in making mail/no mail decisions
• ACS and/or NCOA? ACS and/or FASTforward^®? NCOA and/or FASTforward^®?

There are no pat answers to these questions. Whether to use only one of these services or a combination depends on many factors: class of the mail, frequency of mailing, source of the addresses being mailed, lead time to a mailing, available real estate on the mail piece, esthetics, and much more. However, knowing about these services will help a mailer make an informed decision.

1Price decreases with quantity

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