Do the Job Manually

Essentially, you’re having the data processing vendor do what your operators should have done (but couldn’t or wouldn’t do) at order time by entering the customer’s proper mailing code.

Although this kind of back-matching usually is OK with rental list owners, check with them first to be sure. The required software is highly specialized since it must identify approximate rather than exact name and address matches, but the good thing is that this is the same software that data processing vendors already use for their routine merge/purge of mailing lists. Rather, this kind of back-matching doesn’t require vendors to purchase or perform anything new. And while your hit rates won’t be 100 percent, they’ll be high enough to significantly improve the accuracy of your sales-by-keycode reports.