Postal address standardization takes an address from the real world and attempts to validate all or part of it against Post Office rules. This sometimes results in a change to the real world address, or at least the assignment of some type of postal sort code.

A minimum result is that usually the city, state and zip code conform to the Post Office rules and are valid in respect of each other (a city with this name does exist in this state and has this zip code).

The real benefit of postal address standardization is the creation of efficiently deliverable mail by allowing bulk mailings to be sorted according to postal routes.

What Postal Address Standardization does not guarantee is that the mail is going to the intended addressee. This can be a result of poor matching against the rules and subsequent data corruption. The financial benefit of doing the mailing may, however, more than compensate for such mistakes.

Postal Standardization also cannot guarantee that the addressee will appreciate a change in their address.

The real danger to the business is if the organization keeps this enhanced address as the default in preference to the real world address. The future ability to match to the address is then dependent on subsequent reports of it conforming to the same rules.

Avoid standardizing the customer’s default address as this may adversely affect future matching. Store a Standardized Postal Address as a separate entity, or use Postal Address Standardization only as part of the output process which creates the mailing file.