Formatted Addresses and Mail Carrier Standards
When you prepare address records for a mail campaign, you create a printable address structure that matches the formatting standards of the mail carrier.
For example, the USPS maintains the following address format for domestic United States addresses:
Line 1 | Person/Contact Data | JOHN DOE |
Line 2 | Street Number, Street, Sub-Building | 123 MAIN ST NW STE 12 |
Line 3 | Locality, State, ZIP Code | ANYTOWN NY 12345 |
You can define a printable address format that writes each line of the address to a single port. You can use ports that recognize the types of data on each line, or you can use ports that populate the address structure regardless of the data on each line.
The following table shows different ways you can format a United States address for printing:
For This Address | Use These Ports | Or Use These Ports |
---|
JOHN DOE | Recipient Line 1 | Formatted Address Line 1 |
123 MAIN ST NW STE 12 | Delivery Address Line 1 | Formatted Address Line 2 |
ANYTOWN NY 12345 | Country Specific Last Line 1 | Formatted Address Line 3 |
Use Formatted Address Line ports when the data set contains different types of address, such as business and residential addresses. A business address may need three address lines for contact and organization data. The Address Validator transformation ensures that each business or residential address is correctly formatted by using Formatted Address Line ports only when they are needed. However, Formatted Address Line ports do not identify the type of data that they contain.
Use Recipient Line, Delivery Address Line, and Country Specific Last Line ports when all address follow one format. The Recipient Line, Delivery Address Line, and Country Specific Last Line ports separate the address data elements by information type and make the data set easy to understand.
Note: You can select other ports to process this address. This example focuses on ports that format the addresses for printing and delivery.
Demographic and Geographic Data
When you create a record set for a mail campaign, you can add multiple types of data that may not otherwise appear in the address. Use this data to review the demographic and geographic spread of the mail items.
For example, you can identify the Congressional District that a United States address belongs to. You can also generate latitude and longitude coordinates if the destination country includes the coordinates in its mail system reference data.