DENVER — The U.S. Postal Service's new addressing tool, Delivery Point Validation, is now available to software vendors, the agency announced at the Fall National Postal Forum.
Mailers can run their mailing lists through the DPV product to confirm that an address is a USPS delivery point. There are more than 145 million USPS-delivered addresses.
“Because of the fact that mailing lists are sold and traded and exchanged, some addresses appear to be legitimate but are not,” said Jim Wilson, product manager for the USPS. “If a mail piece was attempted to be delivered to this type of address, it would either result in a mail piece being returned undeliverable-as-addressed or being discarded.”
By incorporating DPV into the matching process, mailers could determine whether the address exists, down to apartment or suite information, he said.
Mailers could process their address records using commercial address-matching software that standardizes the address record and assign postal codes, including ZIP codes, ZIP+4 codes and carrier route codes using data provided by the postal service.
DPV will be made available to vendors that sell CASS-certified software products, including Group 1, Pitney Bowes, FirstLogic and BCC Software. Wilson said mailers should see DPV products from these companies in 90 to 120 days.
Christine T. Wesley, assistant manager of marketing operations for Cabela's, a hunting, fishing and outdoor gear cataloger in Sidney, NE, said she is interested in looking at DPV “because it will give us the opportunity to correct the address [on the catalog] before we send it in the mail.”
