Direct-mail glossary

Address hygiene

List hygiene, address validation

Address hygiene is the full process of cleaning a mailing list before use — standardizing addresses to USPS format (CASS), updating records for people who moved (NCOA), and removing duplicate entries so no recipient gets the same piece twice.

Why it matters

A raw customer list exported from a practice management system or CRM is rarely mail-ready. It may have informal abbreviations ("St" vs "Street"), missing suite numbers, outdated ZIP codes, moved patients, duplicate records from multiple sign-up sources, and even completely invalid addresses. Mailing against an uncleaned list wastes money on every undeliverable piece, and a piece that never arrives is a missed opportunity. Good address hygiene typically runs in this order: (1) CASS certification to standardize and validate the format of each address; (2) NCOA processing to update addresses for movers who filed a change with USPS; (3) deduplication to remove exact or near-exact duplicates. Some mail houses also run a deliverability check against the USPS Delivery Sequence File to flag vacant addresses or PO Boxes.

CardCadence

How CardCadence handles it

CardCadence does not run CASS or NCOA processing on your list — it mails what you import. What it does do: every address is format-checked on import, and any card USPS won't accept surfaces in your dashboard as an address issue instead of silently burning a card. You decide once, in Settings, whether CardCadence auto-corrects and retries those or skips them. If your list has been sitting in a practice management system for years, run it through a hygiene service before you import it.

Related terms

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