When should I NCOA (National Change of Address)

Move Update Standard

To qualify for non-profit and bulk mail discounts, mailers must meet the United States Postal Service’s Move Update Standard. This standard requires mailers who claim presorted or automation prices for First-Class Mail® or Standard Mail® service to demonstrate that they have updated their mailing list within 95 days before the mailing date.

You don’t qualify for these discounts if you don’t meet the Move Update Standard. To ensure that you qualify, use an NCOA service every 95 days to stay USPS compliant and to benefit from bulk mailing rates.

Using an NCOA service helps you meet the Move Update Standard, qualify for bulk mailing discounts, and avoid unnecessary fines. Between wasted postage and penalties, an NCOA process can save you up to $0.44 per bad address!

File Updates

It would be a real bummer to process your file only to miss out on a change of address that's filed a few weeks (or days) afterwards. Luckily we have a solution! We automatically re-process your active file daily and provide a weekly update free of charge. Active files are those that were first processed within the last 90 days.

Files processed through TrueNCOA expire after 95 days. We re-process your file as soon as it expires. The re-processed file is treated like a brand new file. When the re-process completes, you'll get a notification email inviting you to review the TrueNCOA Report. If you like what you see, export and download the file.  You will be charged a credit to download this file. The download file includes all input data and all output data, rather than the limited data included in the Automated Active File Re-Processing.

Don't Use Direct Mail?

NCOA returns more data than just standardized and corrected addresses. Putting this NCOA data to work can benefit other initiatives besides direct mail. Many of these data points offer insights into your donors' or customers' lifestyle and household composition. Read more here for a few creative ways to get more out of your NCOA data (and a few reasons to start NCOA even if you don't send direct mail).