What is NCOA?

Approximately 17% of Americans move their place of residence and/or business anually, but the old address often remains on the mailer's list. A lower delivery rate means shrinking profits and wasted postage! It is estimated that at least 8% of all mail is undeliverable due to incorrect addresses. That's why it's important to update your mail list with National Change of Address (also known as NCOA) before it enters the mailstream.

NCOA information is gathered when a residence or business files a change of address with the Post Office (either electronically through the Internet or by submitting hard copy orders through the mail or at a Post Office retail counter). The database contains approximately 160 million permanent change-of-address (COA) records consisting of names and addresses of individuals, families, and businesses who have filed a change-of-address with the Postal Service. This NCOA database is updated frequently and on a continual basis. Although the Post Office does not offer an NCOA list update service directly, AD-Vantage Marketing is licenced to process your list using the NCOA process. This allows you to update delivery addresses before you mail. This saves you postage and avoids delivery delays.

In addition to updating your list before mailing (to improve delivery), we can provide you with a file of the updated records in order for you to make the changes permanently to your in-house database.

AD-Vantage Marketing can NCOA update your mail list at very reasonable rates.

Please contact us contact us for a complete pricing estimate.

There are two levels of NCOA:

• NCOA18 - National Change of Address with 18 months of move history (now required for all bulk mailings)
• NCOA48 - National Change of Address with 48 months of move history

You can email your data to us or transfer the file using our file upload page. For information regarding file transfers and acceptable file formats, see our guide: How to Format & Send Mailing Lists. Your mail list will be updated and returned within 1 to 2 business days.

To improve your NCOA "hit" rate, we will "zip code correct and plus-4" (part of CASS Certification) your mail list prior to the NCOA process. Our special software assigns missing zip codes, corrects invalid zip codes, and corrects misspellings in city and street names. Ask your account representative for details and pricing.

P.S. All mailing data files are required to be run through NCOA18, at the minimum, or NCOA48 within 90 days before mailing in order to take advantage of postal presort discounts.

Ready for a cleaner mailing list? your file now and we'll get back to you with an estimated cost to NCOA process your list!