AbbrevIt for Mail Efficiency

Maximize postage discounts and mail efficiency

In February 2006, the USPS® estimated that undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail cost mailers approximately $4-$5 billion annually, and identified improperly abbreviated addresses as a major contributor to this growing problem. Pitney Bowes Software provides address quality solutions that help organizations increase efficiencies, maximize postal savings and ensure the more accurate, reliable delivery of mail.

AbbrevIt™ quickly and easily creates standardized address abbreviations that comply with USPS Publication 28 Postal Addressing Standards and CASS™ coding engines. More accurate addresses save costs by reducing UAA mail and enhancing your organization’s mail processing and delivery.

Avoid costly address errors

Incorrect abbreviation not only creates an invalid address, it prevents information from getting to customers and increases costs through:

• Undeliverable mail
• Return mail handling
• Mail sent at the full postal rate
• Wasted production costs for materials that are never delivered
• Duplicate production costs because the information had to be sent twice
• Unhappy customers who didn’t get the information on time
• Lost revenue because the information was never delivered to the customer

The scale of the UAA Problem

• The USPS has estimated that close to 24% of all mail is incorrectly addressed
• An estimated four to six billion pieces of mail are returned as undeliverable, at a USPS cost of nearly $2 billion annually
• In 2006, six billion Standard Class mail pieces were destroyed
• UAA materials cost mailers $4-$5 billion annually
• True cost to mailers is estimated at $18 billion

(Statistics quoted by Jack Potter, Postmaster General, USPS, Mail Journal of Communications)

To start reducing UAA mail costs and improve customer satisfaction, contact us today.

NOTICE: Because we offer many custom solutions, it is our policy not to post pricing on our website. Please contact our knowledgeable staff to select and price products that fit your organization's budget, number of users, IT environment, data requirements, support and education needs. We apologize for any inconvenience.

USPS and CASS™ compliant abbreviations

According to USPS® Publication 28, “A standardized address is one that is fully spelled out, abbreviated by using the Postal Service Standard abbreviations and uses the proper format for the address style.”

AbbrevIt™ provides an easy-to-use means for eliminating invalid addresses due to improper abbreviations, thereby reducing UAA mail and its associated costs of materials, processing and postage. Based on USPS Standards, AbbrevIt enables mailers to achieve standard abbreviated postal addresses while maintaining CASS compliance for increased postal discounts and reliable delivery of mail.

Abbreviate addresses to user-specified space

AbbrevIt can accommodate address components in legacy data bases originally designed to fit the constraints of address labels. When a USPS-approved address line (recommended length of up to 64 characters) exceeds the user-specified space, AbbrevIt can generate a smaller value, typically 20 to 30 characters.

The flexibility of an open source interface

AbbrevIt provides an open source interface that works seamlessly with our industry-leading Finalist® solution, but can also be easily customized to fit your specific environment or integrated with other CASS products.

A simple, easy-to-use solution

Standardizing addresses with AbbrevIt is as easy as 1,2,3. Just pass in the address string, indicate the size required and AbbrevIt does the rest.

An Example of How AbbrevIt works:

Take the address of:
 1879 Slippery Rock Rd

• This needs to fit into a 20-character field, but unfortunately contains 21 characters
• Truncating the address to 20 characters, will provide:
 1879 Slippery Rock R
• This address is now incomplete and likely won’t code with a CASS approved coding engine
• Dropping the last word of the address line is ambiguous (is it Street or Court?):
 1879 Slippery Rock
• AbbrevIt reduces the address to:
 1879 Slippry Rck Rd

This abbreviation meets the 20 character requirement and is CASS approved, qualifying for postal discounts to save both time and money.