When I go through my home mailbox I’m typically good about filtering out  those mail pieces addressed to the wrong person, in a lot of times, one that has not lived at the residence for over three years. But there are those days when anything that looks important gets opened out of haste and hurry.

The other day as I was filing through my mail I realized that I had opened and accessed another individual’s retirement account information by mistake! The account number, balance and other numerous sensitive data items were staring me in the face. I quickly destroyed the documents and added a call to the company’s customer service line to my “to do” list. The recipient was an individual who had not lived at my address in over five years, maybe more.

When it comes to financial information, many measures have been put in place to ensure security of the account and individual, yet our mailboxes can potentially blow all these measures out the window with a simple missed step like processing a customer file through the National Change of Address (NCOA) database. In today’s booming electronic world, companies and financial institutions have made great gains in attempts to deter identity theft, hackers, phishers and spammers, but in the process, have they forgotten to protect the good old fashioned mailbox?

What practices does your company have in place for sensitive customer data mailings? Is your online customer database in sync with your customer mailing database? Do you know the details of your NCOA processing? Do you have a pre-mailer in place for customers who have had little to no recent activity?

A home mailbox is a federally protected piece of property, yet it is so vulnerable to any slight data integrity mishap. Unfortunately companies can’t password protect mail pieces, but they can take measures to protect their customers by taking the necessary data processing procedures a step further when it comes to sensitive data. I’m guilty of being locked out of my own electronic account because I couldn’t answer a security question like the “what was the name of my maternal grandmother’s first cat” correctly, but now I wonder, what information are the people I sold my house to receiving about me? I will never know, but I hope the companies I do business with are protecting my information.  Protect your customers and protect your company in the process.

How many times have you been the recipient of a mail piece addressed to someone else? What usually crosses your mind when this happens? If you’re in the Direct Mail Marketing business, you think of the steps that did or did not take place that should have before this piece went out. But if you’re NOT in the business, which sums up the majority of the population, you most likely toss this piece in the trash without much thought, other than a glance at the sender’s name.

While the advertising element is still there, three very crucial elements are now at stake: Credibility, timeliness and relationship. Do you think more, or less of the companies that you now know have incorrect information? On a credibility scale, these companies have dropped a notch or two in most recipients’ books, simply because their data is wrong. If they can’t get your name right, can you trust them?

Let’s turn the tables around for a minute and move from the prospect’s perspective, to a business perspective. Obviously data integrity is of utmost importance with any mail campaign, and many companies have become more aware of NCOA processing, mainly due to more stringent regulations set by the USPS since 2008 (and of course, the postal discounts that come with that coveted NCOA certificate).

But the benefits of NCOA processing go far beyond a postal discount.

While maybe you suppress your current customers from your upcoming mail campaign, do you still know where your current customers live?

With Altair Customer Intelligence’s unique product line-up, we cater to client’s needs by outlining NCOA specifics. Here are some key elements that you should always ask when it comes to NCOA:

1. What is your NCOA time-frame window?

NCOA tracks moves in blocks by months. Most NCOA processing tracks moves within the past 18 months. Anything beyond may or may not be captured. While 48 –month processing is available, it is not typically the standard.

2. Should I NCOA my customer file?

You should always NCOA your customer file for a mail campaign, but it is at your discrepancy whether or not to NCOA the file for suppression purposes. There are many moves that might not have a forwarding address. At Altair we give the option to retain original addresses as well as new addresses in order to reduce the chance of re-prospecting your customers.

3. When was my data file processed through NCOA?

This is important to receive the postal discount. The current USPS standard is that your data file be processed through NCOA in the past 90 days.

4. What happens to the records that match in NCOA (the movers)?

This is an important aspect of the NCOA processing. Depending on your product and projected prospect group, the decision to keep or drop these records is an important decision. At Altair our experienced sales team can coach you through these decisions in order to achieve your goal. While a New Mover campaign would benefit from keeping the records with new addresses, a Home Refinance campaign might not. There are many ways that this processing could also work as a suppression step when trying to eliminate movers within a certain timeframe.

Did you know that Altair Customer Intelligence offers services that go beyond the direct mail marketing, customer intelligence, and analytical spectrum? Our unique set of technological and data processing tools gives us a unique position in today’s high tech business world. Companies in the Health Insurance and Healthcare Industry in general are prime examples of those that can benefit from Altair’s services.

Most Health Insurance and Healthcare companies put their money where the profit is, naturally. For some this is bill review, for others, provider recruitment and credentialing might take a big piece of the pie. Because of the nature of these companies, the budget may not allow for enhanced data processing tools. These limitations lead to inefficiencies and ultimately, loss of dollars through hours, weeks and even months of unnecessary manual address validation efforts, not to mention additional hours of work for data production and reporting teams due to lack of resources.

Many Healthcare companies spend endless hours tracking down and confirming provider data by phone, fax and mail, at a time when much more efficient address validation and standardization processes are available, but who wants to invest in these resources if this isn’t the primary nature of your business? That’s where we come in.

Does your company have a provider network that isn’t quite as polished as it should be? Do you have patient demographic data in desperate need of standardization and address validation? Do your clients complain about inaccurate addresses on Workers’ Compensation Panels? Altair can help! We have the capacity to standardize, NCOA and output various database sizes in a matter of hours or less. We can deliver reports and data subsets to cater your company’s needs in a highly efficient and timely process.

Call us today to find out about testing us in helping with your provider and patient data updates. Let us help you do what you do best, by doing what we do best.

At Altair we have a unique suppression/matching process through the use of match keys/address/household keys that not all companies offer.

Address standardization alone does not ensure that previous addresses or current customers will be suppressed or matched to consumer databases.

Through the use of address, household and individual match keys Altair is able to catch name variations, address variations, etc., which in turn provides better accuracy in customer analysis and suppression for new orders.

The address key is built using components of the parsed address fields, building on zip-code and parsed address components, while the household and individual keys use a soundex. This allows for a better match rate, despite minor differences in spelling.

Clients spend valuable hours and dollars on customer intelligence, database analysis, and marketing strategies, those dollars can easily be wasted if too many records slip through the cracks created with incomplete address standardization practices.  With Altair’s ability to capture more “true” customer information through client data overlays with match keys, valuable information can be acquired and maintained in order to formulate the best marketing strategy for current and future campaigns.