United Kingdom
U.K. Change of Address
Global-Z matches your customer databases against the U.K. National Change of Address (NCOA) File, and can:
- Keep track of your valuable customers.
- Permanently update any matching records on your customer database with the new address information (permitted for customer records only).
- Enhance database accuracy.
- Make your U.K. mail campaigns more cost effective.
The U.K. National Change of Address (NCOA) database contains information on individuals and families in the U.K .who have registered a change of address with Royal Mail. The database allows marketers to identify movers on their database, and update the database with the movers’ new address information. The NCOA database is the official mover’s database for the U.K. market and is licensed directly from Royal Mail (the U.K.’s official postal bureau). The database contains information reported directly to Royal Mail by individuals and families who change address.
According to Royal Mail, 10% of U.K. individuals move each year. Royal Mail estimates that even the most basic direct mail campaign can cost as much as £0.45 ($0.70) per mail piece. The identification and updating of individuals and families who have moved to a new address are critical to ensure that marketing dollars are spent most cost-effectively.
How It Works
The NCOA File contains data obtained directly from Royal Mail redirection applications. Royal Mail provides a Redirection Service to members of the public who wish to have mail which is addressed to them forwarded to a new address. To apply for this service, customers complete an application form including details of their name, old address, and new address. Redirection applications can also be completed over the phone or online. All applications are ID verified for security purposes, which means that the data is extremely accurate.
The NCOA database contains 20 million records (as of February 2010) and is updated monthly. Approximately 117,000 new names are added to the database each month.
For marketers looking to permanently update their customer databases with new address information for NCOA movers, there are numerous NCOA flags which may be returned along with the matches and can be permanently appended to your database.
Just Need to Suppress?
The NCOA database contains only those movers who have given Royal Mail permission to release their personal information, which accounts for 60% of all redirection applications. For the remaining 40% of movers who have not permitted the release their personal information, marketers may still suppress these movers from their database by utilizing the Royal Mail NCOA Suppress.
Global-Z is an official Royal Mail licensee for NCOA, as well as an official licensee of PAF, Postzon, Mailsort, and the Royal Mail NCOA Suppress service.
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U.K. NCOA Suppress
Global-Z matches your customer and prospect databases against Royal Mail’s National Change of Address (NCOA) Suppress file and can:
- Save money by flagging or suppressing the name and addresses of individuals who are known not to reside at a given address from your mailing campaigns.
- Ensure that your marketing dollars are spent most cost-effectively.
- Reduce wastage.
- Remove from databases and mailing files, the names and addresses of people who have died.
Global-Z’s direct license with Royal Mail (the U.K’.s official postal bureau) enables marketers to flag or suppress from mailing campaigns the name and addresses of individuals who are known not to reside at a given address. The service utilizes the official NCOA Suppress database which contains data gathered from a variety of reliable sources within Royal Mail, to form one of the most comprehensive U.K. suppression databases on the market.
According to Royal Mail, 10% of U.K. individuals move each year. Royal Mail estimates that even the most basic direct mail campaign can cost as much as £0.45 ($0.70) per mail piece. The identification and updating of individuals and families who have moved to a new address is critical to ensure that marketing dollars are spent most cost-effectively.
How it Works
The NCOA Suppress database (formerly the UK Universal Suppression Service [USS], and also known as Royal Mail’s Gone Away Suppression [GAS] file), contains suppression data obtained from the following sources:
- The Royal Mail Redirection file – National Change of Address movers who have not given permission to release their new address information, as well as all expired NCOA “moved from” addresses. All NCOA applications are verified with the consumer’s official identification documentation, so Royal Mail regards this data as extremely accurate.
- Mail which has been returned as undeliverable and flagged as “Gone Away” (no longer at the address), which is further verified against other data sources. Only high-confidence matches are included on the database.
Mailers can choose to include or exclude suppressions from any of the available sources, making the service extremely flexible.
Approximately 300,000 new names are added to the database each month.
Global-Z matches your customer and prospect databases against the NCOA Suppress database, and can either:
- Suppress or delete any matching records from your mailing campaign and output the net records excluding those matches (for customer and prospect records), or
- Permanently flag any matching records on your customer database and return those matches together with a return reason code (permitted for customer records only).
Need The Forwarding Address
The NCOA Suppress database does not contain those movers who have given Royal Mail permission to release their forwarding address. To access the relocation/mover address, which accounts for 60% of all redirection applications received by Royal Mail, please read about the Royal Mail NCOA Update service.
U.K. Geocoding
With the ever-increasing need to identify the physical location of people, places and things, your mapping, navigation and a host of other line-of-business applications focusing on the U.K. can now benefit from Global-Z’s U.K. Geocoding Services to benefit your marketing, sales and logistical needs such as:
- Pinpoint prospects and customers with targeted marketing campaigns;
- Geographic Information System (GIS) analyses aiding your interactive queries, spatial information analyses, data edits, maps and the like;
- Help customers find you via store/asset location identification;
- Minimize transportation costs through distribution analysis;
- Salesforce optimization: identifying sales territories to specific geography with ease;
- Catastrophe risk analysis: helping businesses (e.g., insurance underwriters) identify locations to help absorb losses and avoid financial distress.
Global-Z’s U.K. Geocoding Service allows you to link geographic data for all known postcodes in the U.K., linking a record-specific grid reference (100-meter resolution) and latitude/longitude (LAT/LON) reference to each address which matches to the Royal Mail postal address file (PAF).
Appending this valuable geocode data may be maximized first through our International Address Hygiene/International Address Standardization service which corrects addresses and formats them to the unique requirements of Royal Mail. We obtain full postal code databases directly from Royal Mail, including current grid reference data. We also maintain continual contact with them to ensure our information is up to date and accurate.
How U.K. Geocoding Works
LAT/LON and distance calculations are appended at 100-meter resolution to your U.K. postal address data. Higher resolution data is available. However, most applications benefit from 100m resolution.
Distances are based on the southwest corner of the postcode area, rather than an exact address location, based on how reference data is provided by Royal Mail. As a result, very short distances are typically accurate to within a mile or two, depending on the size of the postcode area.
Distances between Northern Ireland and mainland U.K. addresses are accurate to within approximately 10 miles. This is because the Ireland Grid system is a completely different system than the U.K. National Grid. This accuracy is enhanced using latitude and longitude conversion through Global-Z.
Some postcode areas do not support distance calculations, specifically P.O. boxes, Isle of Man, Jersey, or Guernsey.
