





The National Change of Address (NCOA) database was created in 1986 by the US Postal Service to save themselves money by reducing the volume of direct mail that was undeliverable.
Individuals must pro-actively submit a postcard when they move to be included in the database. Fewer than half of movers do this regularly.
This information is not independently verified, and it is only stored for 18-48 months.
There are no historical records, which means if an individual has moved 2 or more times, you cannot locate them using NCOA.
NCOA only includes addresses, which makes it useless for phone-a-thons, email blasts, social media campaigns, or segmentation of any kind.
Most Proprietary Change Of Address (PCOA) databases were built in the late 90s and haven’t changed much since then.
These databases use low-quality sources of information, such as magazine subscriptions and warranty cards, which are notorious in the industry for containing errors or outdated information.
If a record comes back from a PCOA database with no new data appended, that does NOT mean the input information was correct. All it means is they couldn't match the person in their database.
Companies maintaining PCOA databases largely purchase data from each other, which means outdated and inaccurate information proliferates quickly and persists across vendors.
Without advanced computational logic, these databases can often fail to identify an individual if the name does not match exactly (e.g. Elizabeth and Lizzy) or can identify false positives by not taking generation into account (e.g. Mike Smith Sr and Mike Smith Jr).








The National Change of Address (NCOA) database was created in 1986 by the US Postal Service to save themselves money by reducing the volume of direct mail that was undeliverable.
Individuals must pro-actively submit a postcard when they move to be included in the database. Fewer than half of movers do this regularly.
This information is not independently verified, and it is only stored for 18-48 months.
There are no historical records, which means if an individual has moved 2 or more times, you cannot locate them using NCOA.
NCOA only includes addresses, which makes it useless for phone-a-thons, email blasts, social media campaigns, or segmentation of any kind.
Most Proprietary Change Of Address (PCOA) databases were built in the late 90s and haven’t changed much since then.
These databases use low-quality sources of information, such as magazine subscriptions and warranty cards, which are notorious in the industry for containing errors or outdated information.
If a record comes back from a PCOA database with no new data appended, that does NOT mean the input information was correct. All it means is they couldn't match the person in their database.
Companies maintaining PCOA databases largely purchase data from each other, which means outdated and inaccurate information proliferates quickly and persists across vendors.
Without advanced computational logic, these databases can often fail to identify an individual if the name does not match exactly (e.g. Elizabeth and Lizzy) or can identify false positives by not taking generation into account (e.g. Mike Smith Sr and Mike Smith Jr).
