Address Hygiene Using CIM GOLD

Address hygiene involves “cleaning up” mailing addresses. But did you know you can use CIM GOLD® to take care of address hygiene?

Pop quiz:

1. How many pieces of mail does the United States Postal Service (USPS) process each year that are undeliverable as addressed?
    
   1. about 450,000
   2. just under 3 million
   3. 8 billion
   4. over 5 billion
      
      
2. What percentage of the US population moves to a new address each year?
   
   
   1. 2.5%
   2. 7%
   3. 10%
   4. 22%
      
      
3. How many ways are there to perform address hygiene in CIM GOLD?
    
   1. none
   2. at least 2
   3. no more than 10
   4. 450

For the answers to the first two questions, see our last blog post, What Is Address Hygiene? For the answer to the last question … read on!

As a quick refresher, address hygiene involves “cleaning up” mailing addresses (and email addresses, for that matter) to make sure they are accurate and up-to-date before sending mail to those addresses. Just like with any kind of hygiene (hand washing, tooth brushing), it is best done in small but regular doses.

Last time, we talked about three things you can do to improve your address hygiene. But did you know you can also use CIM GOLD^® to clean up your addresses? Here are two more things you can do to improve address hygiene right in CIM GOLD^®.

#1: Validate City, State, and ZIP

On the Customer Relationship Management > Households screen > Addresses tab, you’ll find a button labeled <Lookup City/State/ZIP>. When you click on this button, a dialog will open up with three search boxes at the top. Enter one or two search items here and click the <Search> button to check which city, state, and ZIP code go together. This is especially helpful for looking up a city and state to make sure the ZIP code on file matches the city/state on file; or vice versa, to look up a ZIP code and make sure the city/state matches what’s on file. While this will not fix other mistakes in the address (such as the wrong house number), it can be a quick check to help detect potential fraud, or just to flag up a problem address.

#2: Update the Mail Code

On the same screen, you’ll find a field called Mail Code (down under the Country field … see it there?). Most addresses will have a Mail Code of “10 – Normal.” However, if you learn that an address is bad (maybe it got returned marked as “no longer at this address” or “undeliverable as addressed”?), take a moment to update this code to “30 – Bad Address.”

Once you update that code, the address (or customer name) will be listed at the top of statement transmissions to third parties who print statements for your customers, along with any other addresses marked as bad. That acts as a little alert to you (or your third-party statement vendor) not to send mail to that address, because it won’t get to the intended recipient anyway—and it also reminds you to check in with your customer and try to get a new address from them.

You can also build GOLDMiner^℠ reports or Collection Queues based on the Mail Code field (NAMAIL) and assign an employee to contact those customers to update their addresses. (We’ll talk about how to create a GOLDMiner^℠ report or Collection Queue based on that data in a follow-up blog post.)

And there you have it: Two simple things you can do right in CIM GOLD^® to clean up your address hygiene. Remember, it’s best to do these things regularly—daily, if possible—for the best possible address hygiene, which will save you time, money, and headaches.

(PS – As a reward for reading this far, I’ll go ahead tell you the answers to the quiz: 1 – d; 2 – c; 3 – b.)