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Verified mail production

Piece-Level Verified Mail Production

Most mail is checked by sampling: someone pulls a piece from a tray and looks at it. Piece-level verification means a camera reads every finished piece, matches it against the record it was built from, and diverts anything that does not agree. Plavidian produces verified mail in Vista, California for political, government, nonprofit and commercial mailings. Verification is an add-on you choose per job, offered for letter-size mail.

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Sampling vs verification

  • A sample shows only that the pulled pieces were right
  • Verification checks every piece
  • Sampling catches errors that repeat on every piece
  • Verification also catches the single wrong piece
  • Only verification leaves a record of each piece
Sentry live dashboard: the job records beside the camera read of the piece
Sentry camera verification, an add-on
  • Since 2008Producing print and mail in Vista, California
  • USPS Full-ServiceCertified Mail Service Provider
  • Piece-level verificationCamera-read add-on for letter-size mail
  • AAPC memberAmerican Association of Political Consultants
  • Vista ChamberChamber of Commerce member

The arithmetic

Why a sample misses scattered errors

Pull ten pieces from a 50,000-piece run and inspect them. If 50 pieces are wrong, the chance that a ten-piece sample contains one of them is under one percent. Sampling is good at finding systemic faults, where every piece is wrong the same way. It is close to useless at finding the fifty pieces where a merge collapsed, a feeder double-fed, or one record produced the wrong version. Reading every piece and matching it to its record is the only method that finds those, and it produces the record afterwards.

The arithmetic
Pieces in the run50,000
Pieces that are wrong50
Pieces pulled and inspected10
Chance the sample contains a wrong pieceunder 1%

Where verification matters

The mailings where a wrong piece is expensive

Political mail with multiple versions
A contrast piece sent to the wrong segment can turn into a campaign story.
Matched inserting
Letter, reply device and personalized insert that must belong to the same record. Multipage personalized letters are matched by a computer-controlled inserter that checks the pages match.
Public and legal notices
Where you may need to show which notice went to which address.
Financial and benefit communications
Statements, plan notices and anything where a piece sent to the wrong person is a privacy incident.
Bilingual runs
A single run producing several languages, where the wrong language is invisible to a spot check.

What the camera reads

The barcode already on the piece

Every mailpiece carries an Intelligent Mail barcode encoding a mailer ID and a serial number unique to that record. The camera reads it at production speed. Nothing extra is printed and nothing is added to the piece to make it verifiable. That serial was written into the barcode from the piece's own record when the piece was composed, so the camera reads the same identifier the piece was built with. The camera station itself is shown on the Camera Verification page.

A printed address block with its Intelligent Mail barcode, the recipient name and street blurred
The Intelligent Mail barcode under the address block: the identifier the camera reads (name and street blurred).

Matching

Against the record it came from

The serial read from the piece is matched back to the row in the production file. That answers a narrow but important question: is the piece in front of the camera the one this record was supposed to produce.

Exceptions

Mismatched and unreadable pieces are diverted

A piece that does not match, or cannot be read, is diverted from the good stream automatically. It does not enter a tray, so it cannot become an unexplained shortfall at the postal counter. A piece that cannot be decoded (a fold across the barcode, a misfeed, ink where it should not be) is treated exactly like a mismatch, because an unconfirmed piece cannot be counted as correct.

Reconciliation

What you receive afterwards

At the end of the run the counts are reconciled: records submitted, records suppressed, pieces produced, pieces verified, exceptions and their disposition, pieces mailed. Each diverted piece stands for a record that still needs a good piece; the reprint run is built from exactly those records, verified the same way and reconciled back against the original file, so the final count is complete: 50,000 records in, 49,950 verified on the first pass, 50 reprinted and verified, 50,000 accounted for. Tracking then runs against the same identifiers, so delivery is reported per record rather than in aggregate.

What this is not

What verification does not prove

Verification proves that the piece produced matches the record it came from. It does not prove the record was correct: if the wrong address is in your file, the camera will confirm a piece with the wrong address on it. That is what CASS, NCOALink and deduplication are for, upstream. It also does not prove delivery; USPS scans show where the piece went afterwards. Each of the three answers a different question.

One connected workflow

Data to proof, one provider

Most mailings cross three or four vendors. Every handoff is a place where a list changes, a piece goes missing, or nobody can say what actually happened. Plavidian runs these steps in one workflow, with one set of records.

  1. Choose who gets it

    Count households by radius, ZIP, city or district in the Mailing List Builder, or pick carrier routes for EDDM. A list you bring is cleaned with CASS, NCOA and deduplication before anything prints. The Mail Date Planner works the schedule back from the in-home date you want.

    See the Mailing Blueprint
    Mailing Blueprint Free account
    A finished Mailing Blueprint: estimated postage with the planning range, presort tiers and list counts

  2. Printed and addressed in Vista

    Postcards, letters, self-mailers, and booklets, versioned per record, then folded, inserted, tabbed and addressed. Presort, tray and pallet prep and Full-Service electronic documentation follow, then acceptance and drop shipment. Every mailing runs through the same five production steps, written down in the Plavidian Standard.

    How mail is prepared: the Plavidian Standard
    Print File Check No sign-in
    Print File Check report on the USPS postcard layout template: grade B, one warning for RGB color, the passed checks listed

  3. Checked as it runs

    With Plavidian Sentry, an add-on for letter-size mail, a camera reads each piece as it runs and reconciles it to your list; pieces that fail are diverted for reprint. The Assurance Report documents what was produced and presented to USPS.

    How camera verification works
    Assurance Report, sample
    Campaign Mail Assurance Report for a sample job: camera verification counts, read rate and verified rate, then the list processing reconciliation

  4. See where your mail is

    Plavidian Insight is included with every addressed mailing: USPS scan events, a day-by-day delivery curve and delivery maps. The postage statement and the Insight tracking report come with the job. EDDM pieces carry no barcode, so EDDM jobs get the Assurance Report as proof of delivery to USPS.

    See Plavidian Insight
    Insight delivery tracking Included
    Plavidian Insight: delivery counts and a map of delivered pieces

  5. See who responded

    Plavidian Response, an add-on for addressed postcards, self-mailers and flats, puts a short web address and QR code on each piece and counts visits, scans and form answers by day and ZIP on the job.

    See Plavidian Response
    Response Page builder Add-on
    The Response Page builder in a Plavidian account: the page blocks in order, a layout picker, the look of the page, and a live preview for one recipient

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is piece-level mail verification?

Reading an identifier on every finished mailpiece and matching it against the record that piece was produced from, so that each piece is individually confirmed rather than a sample being inspected.

What does the camera actually read?

The Intelligent Mail barcode already printed on the piece, which contains a mailer ID and a serial number unique to that record.

What happens when a piece fails verification?

It is diverted out of the good stream automatically before it can enter a tray, and it is recorded as an exception against the record it belongs to.

How are failed pieces recovered?

The affected records are reprinted and verified again, and the reprint is tracked back to the original record so the final count reconciles.

What evidence does the customer receive?

A signed Plavidian Assurance™ Report: records submitted, suppressed, produced, verified, exceptions and disposition, and the USPS documentation for the mailing.

Does verification slow production down?

No. Reads happen at production speed; the camera is in line, not a separate step.

What if the barcode cannot be read?

The piece is treated as an exception and diverted, the same as a mismatch. An unreadable piece is not assumed to be correct.

Is this the same as USPS tracking?

No. USPS scans tell you where a piece went after you handed it over. Verification tells you the piece was correct before you handed it over. Insight does the first; Sentry does the second.

Can we get the verification data?

Yes. Camera verification is an add-on you choose for the job, and on a job that carries it the reconciled record is part of that job.

Related

Where to look next

Camera Verification, Job Accuracy, Plavidian Assurance Report, Plavidian Insight, The Plavidian Standard

Postal terms on this page: Intelligent Mail barcode, Full-Service, Seamless Acceptance

Verification is an add-on you choose per job

Offered for letter-size mail: a camera reads every finished piece, matches it against the record it was built from, and diverts anything that does not agree.

Get a Quote Talk to a Mail Specialist

Related

Mail tracking and verified production

How mail is followed from the Intelligent Mail barcode printed on the piece through the USPS scans that show it moving toward delivery.