Royal Mail enhances data quality offering

Royal Mail has added new functionality and flexibility to its National Change of Address (NCOA) portfolio, by expanding the NCOA stable to include broader, more responsive data quality products and services. In response to feedback from the industry, Royal Mail has worked with data professionals to bring two up-to-the-minute propositions to market: NCOA Suppress and NCOA Update.

NCOA Suppress replaces the Universal Suppression Service (USS), delivering extra functionality by providing goneaway suppression and cleansing in one service, as well as suppression and permanent flags. NCOA Suppress also includes weekly and daily updates so that users can access the most up-to-date insight. The service is being supplied exclusively through verified Redirection data, and is Postcode Address File (PAF)-cleansed, and is available now to new users.

NCOA Update is a forwarding address tool which allows users to update address details on their database with new forwarding details. In the near future, it will also supply email and mobile phone details on request to update existing customer records as an additional data feed. NCOA Update replaces the previous NCOA service, and the suppression-only option is no longer available.

For the first time, the new NCOA portfolio is be backed by a full history of a change of address data, across 34m consumer records, providing improved match rates and greater historical insight into consumer relocations.

NCOA Update will also allow linked moves to be chained for the first time, meaning that database marketers can track their records’ relocation history, but outputting only the most recently confirmed address.

To launch the new product portfolio, Royal Mail is offering the monthly NCOA Suppress Licence free of charge for the first year to resellers and mailing agents that buy NCOA Update.

Keith Jones, head of data strategy at Royal Mail, said: “Royal Mail is intent on investing in and developing its data assets to help database managers and marketers improve targeting and reduce waste to get the very best value from their campaign activities.

“Using the most accurate Redirection and PAF cleansed data, NCOA Suppress and NCOA Update provide additional peace of mind for database managers, with added flexibility for a more inclusive approach to goneaway cleansing and suppression.

“These new products create a unique customer view, allowing marketers to track lapsed customers through the provision of chained, historical Redirection data for the first time.”