CASS Certification
The CASS certication and encoding engine is one of the most important features in mail management CASS software. This is the step that cleans, corrects, standardizes and validates addresses.
Here, we also append the records with the proper zip + 4, carrier route information and the two digit delivery point data to create the proper post-net barcode.
Most people are not aware nor do they understand that the CASS certification process varies considerably among the many postal CASS software programs available. The power and sophistication of each CASS software engine will determine accuracy, speed and ultimately the number of records that will be properly processed.
Here lies the dilemma: Without a strong CASS software engine, a significant percentage of your mail will never reach its intended audience.
What is the real cost? You be the judge.
Forget the extra postage paid and the lost time and money of wasted materials. The real cost is the opportunity cost of that mail not reaching its target. Remember why you mailed in the first place. Was it important information, timely announcements, sales producing marketing? Again, what cost can you assign to this misfortune? Consider carefully what expected or desired result will never happen now that the mail piece never reached its home. When you start to realize the implications it becomes alarming.
One of the more common and telling examples to help emphasize this point is a company that successfully uses direct mail to market one of its products. They mail ten thousand pieces each month using standard automation rates. The price and profit per sale is considerable. They diligently tracked and charted their mailing information and were able to come up with the cost and revenue per thousand pieces mailed. With an average of one-and-a-half-percent response rate on the mailing and a sale resulting from one out of every four of those responses, they realize approximately one sale for every 250 pieces mailed.
Next, they find that changing their CASS software program, with one known for its address correction capability, resulted with an increase in the number of addresses that were properly delivered by five percent. (The 5% difference is very common and many cases even exceeds this amount.)
They calculated they would average almost two more sales per month by doing nothing more than replacing their mailing product with one that has a strong CASS engine. The more they mailed the more sales resulted from this change.
Consider if you mailed only 200 letters and the same 5% was lost, thus the potential of 10 mail pieces were not received. What do you think the chances that one of those 10 may have led to the opportunity you so desired-in other words, do you feel lucky?
Again, this example shows the importance of proper and timely delivery of mail. It proves to be very costly when you consider the lost opportunity. You have not maximized your potential if you are not using CASS software with a powerful engine for CASS certification.
