Not everyone who moves tells the post office.

When someone moves, filing a change of address with the post office is one item on a long to-do list — and plenty of people never get to it. They update their magazine subscriptions and their credit cards, because those follow them whether they file or not. The post office never hears a word.

For your data, that's a quiet dead end. NCOALink® can only report moves that were filed with the USPS®. Everyone else just stops receiving your mail.

The moves NCOA can't see

Let's be clear about order of operations: NCOALink is still the best method to capture the most moves, and it's required to meet USPS Move Update standards. If you run one thing, run NCOA. But NCOA's reach ends where the filing stops — and the movers who never filed are invisible to it.

Where PCOA data comes from

PCOA — proprietary change of address — fills that gap. The database is compiled from multiple private sources, such as magazine publishers and credit card companies, who often receive change-of-address notifications that are never reported to the USPS. When someone updates a subscription but skips the post office, that move can still be found.

The database reaches back five years of moves and is refreshed monthly, so recent movers are caught while the trail is still warm.

Run it with NCOA, not instead

We always recommend running PCOA in conjunction with NCOALink rather than as a standalone service. NCOA does the heavy lifting; PCOA sweeps behind it for the moves NCOA couldn't see. Together they keep customers reachable who would otherwise fade into undeliverable records — the old address on file, and no path to the new one.

What you get back

Updated addresses for every mover PCOA matches, returned to you and documented — your master data improves, not just one mailing. And because PCOA isn't the right call for every list, we'd rather start with a conversation: we'll tell you what your data needs, and what it doesn't, before you ever send a file.

How it works

1. 1

   Start with a conversation

   PCOA isn't for every list. We'll ask when your data was last updated and how it's used, and tell you honestly whether PCOA will find enough moves to be worth running.

2. 2

   We run NCOALink first

   NCOALink® is still the best single source of move data, and it's what the USPS requires for Move Update compliance — so it always goes first. PCOA is the second net, not a replacement.

3. 3

   PCOA catches what the USPS never heard about

   Your records are matched against a change-of-address database compiled from private sources — the moves people reported to a magazine or credit card company but never to the post office.

4. 4

   New addresses come back to you, documented

   Updated addresses for the movers PCOA finds, returned to your master data with documentation — so customers who would have become undeliverable stay reachable.