The Coding Accuracy Support System, or CASS^TM, was designed by the USPS to improve the accuracy of the address and ZIP Code^TM that appears on each item in a bulk mailing.

Mailings that are CASS Certified^TM are eligible for certain bulk mail postage discounts. In order to become CASS Certified, the mailing list must be run through a software program that is CASS Certified such as our online address verification service.

On average, without any address data quality measures, businesses can save about 20 percent by cleaning their list before mailing. Here’s how.

Let’s say you are planning to mail 3,000 pieces of mail. The cost to design and print each piece is $1, and postage for each is 44 cents, making the total cost to send each piece $1.44. If you’re like an average business, as much as 20 percent of your addresses, or 600 pieces of mail, will be undeliverable. By removing those 600 bad addresses from the mailing, you would be saving $864.

Additionally, we can usually correct about 7 percent of your addresses that would otherwise be undeliverable. This gives you more valid addresses to mail, which means more responses. At the average direct mail response rate of 1 percent to 2 percent, this would generate another two to four responses for the 3,000-piece mailing outlined above.

Cleaning addresses before mailing can save as much as 20 percent on the overall cost of a mail campaign and increase responses by up to 7 percent. However, it’s important to understand that these percentages vary greatly based on your data-quality practices.