ates are determined by the amount of work done by the USPS. The more done in advance (i.e. zip sorting, drop shipping, etc.) the better the rate once at the USPS. Postage Rates can be impacted by many factors.

• Size & Weight — Confirm current requirements with USPS
• Distance to Destination — USPS offers discounts to offset transportation costs to delivery to appropriate processing stations. The closer to the final delivery point the greater the discount. Why? Mail is processed and re-packaged at each facility, which adds time.
• Quantity — Within each mail class, minimum quantities qualify for particular rate levels, depending on how the mail is sorted
• Nonprofit Status — Organizations must be authorized as eligible. Material being mailed must comply with USPS requirements.
• Speed of Delivery
• Mail Entry Point (Major Hubs)
• Automation Compatibility — USPS automated equipment scans barcodes for more efficient mail processing.
   — CRITERIA
       ° CASS - certified addresses
       ° Updated addresses (i.e. NCOA - National Change of Address)
       ° Mailing process must meet criteria for a letter or flat
       ° Presort levels

Changes in paper (manufacturer, lot, basis weight) can be a disaster for Self-Mailers, the USPS accepts mail by pieces weight (ten thousands of a pound). 1% fluctuations can cause the USPS to stop the mailing.

Mailing is the final process and there is no room for lost time. A request for NCOA matching can add 2 days to data processing time.

Size, ink coverage, die-cut, etc. all need to be thoroughly reviewed for mailability.

Customer Mailing Permit & Indicia or Pictorial Mailworks Permit & Indicia.

Bulk Mail Addressing Requirements
Bulk mail addresses can only be processed if using software that has received Presort Accuracy Validation & Evaluation from the USPS. PAVE certified software also contains a built in quality assurance feature called the Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) which must attain 100% verifiable addresses in order to receive addressing postal discounts.

If a mail list fails CASS requires it can be run through an address standardization program that will analyze and correct the addresses to meet Multi Line Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) specifications and then the list can be rerun through CASS.

Examples of standardization are:
• St instead of Street
• S Hackensack instead of South Hackensack
• MA instead of Mass

National Change of Address (NCOA)
The NCSC also maintains the fast forward database files which contains 21,000,000 addresses that have permanently changed within eight months of present day. The permanent changes of address are maintained for 36 months and compared with the national ZIP +4 database which returns approximately 117,000,000 permanent confirmed addresses. Known as the NCOA files.

National Customer Support Center (NCSC)
In the early 1990s the USPS was faced with a “non-deliverable as addressed” rate of 28% and because of this established the NCSC to update and maintain the national ZIP +4 address database of 135,000,000 known US addresses.