BCC Software, a developer of software for professional mailers, announced last week the release of ZIP FOURce, designed to minimize bad data by verifying addresses at the point of data entry through a comparison against official U.S. Postal Service data files.
ZIP FOURce can integrate easily into most customer relationship management programs or other programs that maintain address information, the Rochester, NY, company said.
With ZIP FOURce, programmers set up a data structure containing relevant address information and pass that data to the Applications Programming Interface, which attempts to find a match (or near match) with USPS street address data files. If a match is found, a variety of useful information is returned to the calling program, including a properly spelled and abbreviated address, ZIP+4 code, postal carrier route and delivery point information.
If a matching address cannot be found, ZIP FOURce returns information that helps determine why the address might be invalid.
BCC said ZIP FOURce improves point-of-entry data collection (via Web, telephone, in-person or coupons) and can help users reconnect with past customers who might have been lost due to bad address information. ZIP FOURce also provides demographic information, such as each contact's congressional district.
Melissa Campanelli covers postal news, CRM and database marketing for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
