National Change of Address (NCOA™) Processing

Our NCOA™ processing uses data that JSI licenses from Canada Post™ Corporation to evaluate whether or not people have moved and to supply new addresses for those “movers” whose new addresses are available. A “mover” record may be returned with the new address provided, or it may be returned as “nixie,” meaning that the person is known to have moved but has either not provided a forwarding address or has declined its release. The processing uses six-years’ worth of mover data. JSI writes its NCOA™ software, and this software is audited through Canada Post™’s NCOA™ auditing and licensing program.

Maintain the Quality of Your List

In general, the matching procedures used in NCOA™ processing are “conservative” and are different from those used in merge-purge processing. For “family moves,” those where all of the people in a household move together to another household, we must achieve detailed matches on surname and address elements before we can consider an incoming record to have moved. For “individual moves,” those where one person in a household has moved to a given new address but others have remained in the house or moved to a different new addresses, we must achieve detailed matches on first name, surname and address elements.

The methodology by which incoming names and addresses are compared to the NCOA™ data is defined by Canada Post™ and adherence to this methodology is required by our data license. Certain classes of addresses are inherently difficult to match. Route Service addresses that lack verifiable street information will not be attempted. For these addresses, it is possible that several same-name individuals may reside at different residences on one rural route and the verifiable portions of their addresses are essentially identical. The conservative principles underlying the matching methods dictate that we not apply changes in circumstances where “mismatches” are likely. If an incoming address is invalid, we will not attempt to match it because we cannot reliably verify the address elements that we use to match. For similar reasons, if the address supplied in the NCOA™ data is invalid (and a small percentage are invalid) we will not attempt any matching to this address.

When we run NCOA™ we also run Address Correction, and only addresses that we determine to be valid (or valid after correction) are processed. JSI Address Correction acts as the main “engine” in the processing by parsing addresses so that validated address elements can be compared to the NCOA™ data. Therefore, it is cost-effective to have us perform NCOA™ processing in conjunction with address accuracy processing.

JSI implements special data handling for the NCOA™ file to build “chains” that may not be built within the supplied data. For example, for a person who moves from address “A” to address “B” and then subsequently moves from “B” to address “C”, the data as received may indicate separate moves from A to C and C to B but may not link A to C. We therefore build these “chains” to ensure that the result of address A in an incoming record is address C and not address B.

We offer a variety of options when we NCOA™ process a file:

Address Correction and NCOA™ Results – Combined

We can return the file to you with both Address Correction results and NCOA™ results applied. See Address Correction for more information on correction.

NCOA™ results without the Address Correction Results

If you want to receive only NCOA™ results without Address Correction results, we can run Address Correction in the “background” without changing your records.

We also offer NCOA™ processing as an option within merge-purge processing where it can be used to eliminate or redirect prospect mail that would not otherwise reach its destination.

NCOA is a Canada Post trademark. Postal Code is an official mark of Canada Post Corporation.