USPS Move Update / NCOA

According to the U. S. Postal Service, over 40 million Americans change their address annually. NCOA (National Change of Address) service updates your mailing list with the most current address information available. Cleaning up your list cuts costs, ensures deliverability, and reduces waste.  It’s also required.

To qualify for discounted postage rates, the USPS requires mailing lists used for a bulk mailing to have been corrected within the last 95 days. While there are several methods that can be used, the most common, convenient and effective is the NCOA service used by Five Maples.

• Once a year, Five Maples asks you to sign the PAF (processing acknowledgement form) required by the USPS, which verifies that you are the authorized source of the list.

• Five Maples checks your list against the USPS database of over 30 million move updates (the privacy and confidentiality of your list is strictly enforced).

• Five Maples provides several reports that you can use to update your internal mailing list:

  • a Processing Certificate that summarizes the results of the NCOA;

  • an Excel spreadsheet that includes all the address changes made, coded for the reasons why;

  • an Excel spreadsheet of your entire updated list, with a code for each address showing the status of that address or the change made to the address.

• Five Maples will automatically use the corrected addresses for the mailing and will eliminate closed or invalid addresses from the mailing.

Learn more

• Move Update Standard

• Using Your NCOA Results