What is NCOA Inactive Address File and Why is It Important?

There are many tools that you can use to help you grow your business. But one of the most useful might be the NCOA inactive address file. Let’s take a closer look at what this is and how you can leverage it to help your organization grow.

What Is The NCOA Inactive Address File?

The National Change of Address (NCOA) database is owned and maintained by Australia Post. This contains information about the names and addresses of those who have recently moved house. If they gave consent, their new address can be given to mailers with their name and old address. Furthermore, this database contains details of those who have passed away.

However, the inactive address file specifically refers to those who have moved house and haven’t given consent for Australia Post to release their new address. This allows you to flag them within your files, so you don’t send mail to the incorrect address.

How The NCOA Inactive Address Can Benefit You?

Now that we have a better idea of what the inactive address file is, let’s look at some of the ways your organization can benefit from this database.

Saving Money

It’s estimated that 14 percent of Australians have moved within the past 12 months. Unless you actively monitor these changes, you are likely sending mail to the wrong address. With postage costing over $1, this can prove to be a costly mistake.NCOA Inactive Address services will allow you to detect which people have moved, potentially saving you thousands in postage costs.

Saving Time

Sending items to the wrong mailing address can waste your team’s time. They will need to deal with things being returned to the sender. Furthermore, they will have to waste their time preparing and mailing items to customers who will never receive them.

More Effective Mail Campaign

Mail marketing remains one of the most effective ways to communicate with customers. It can be a good way of getting people’s attention and help your organization stand out. Because of this, direct mail campaigns are associated with a high Return on Investment (ROI). A good campaign can deliver ROI of 29 percent, which is higher than paid search results.

A simple way to boost your ROI even higher is by curating your mailing list. NCOA Inactive Address service lets you purge customers who have moved, reducing the costs associated with the campaign. This will make it easier for you to retain existing customers, which is more cost-effective than attracting new ones.

Finding Inactive Addresses Is Easy

Accessing the NCOA Inactive Address service is easy. All you need to do is provide Datawash with a file of your customer’s names and addresses. We can check this against the NCOA files on our portal. Within minutes, you will know which addresses are inactive, so you can update your database as often as you like. These changes are updated weekly.

Conclusion

Having an accurate set of customer records is vital for business owners. Thankfully, you can tap into the NCOA database to learn which of your customers have moved, ensuring your database is always up to date.

What is National Change of Address (NCOA) And Why is It Important?

If you are running a business, you want to be able to communicate effectively with your customers. Mail remains one of the most effective ways to do this, with a direct mail campaign able to get a 4.4 percent response rate, significantly higher than the 0.12 percent that email campaigns can generate.

However, verifying the correct mail addresses of customers can be difficult and time consuming. This is why the NCOA database comes in handy. Let’s take a closer look at NCOA address update and some of the ways it can help business owners.

What is NCOA?
National Change of Address (NCOA) is a series of databases that are maintained by Australia Post. This houses the information of households or individuals who have moved and filled out a ‘mail redirection form’. If they give their permission, their new address can be passed on to businesses. If they don’t give their permission, their records can be flagged in your database as Left Adress or Inactive Address so you can stop mailing to them and save money.

Australia Post also maintains an NCOA database of those who have been listed as deceased on the mail redirection form.

Benefits of Using NCOA
There are several reasons why a business might want to use the NCOA address update . First, it can save you money. Direct mail marketing, while effective, can be expensive. Sending a standard letter will cost you at least $1.10. Because of this, you want to be sure that everything will be arriving at the correct address.

By reducing the amount you are paying to send marketing materials, you will be able to increase your Return on Investment (ROI). This will make it easier for you to grow your business.

Secondly, moving house is a difficult process for many people. They might forget to update their details with all relevant business owners.

You can use NCOA to verify address details and automatically update your customer database. This will save your staff a lot of time, as they don’t need to worry about handling mail that has been returned to the sender. You will be able to ensure that important customer documents, like invoices, arrive at the right address.and the right person.

Thirdly, you will be able to ensure a good customer experience. You will be able to make sure that all relevant communications arrive in a timely fashion. This is especially important if you are sending items to customers. If you have the correct address information you will be able to provide a fast delivery service.

Conclusion
Maintaining accurate customer address information is key for all business owners. Trying to do this yourself can be a frustrating challenge,and waste the time of your staff. This is why people turn to DataWash, to help provide NCOA address update services to keep your address records up to date.