ZIP+4′s are the designation by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for a nine-digit ZIP Code structure. The USPS added the 4-digit extension to the standard 5-digit ZIP Code in the 1980s to facilitate mail sorting and delivery.
The 4-digit extension represents a geographic segment within the larger ZIP Code, such as one side of a city block, a group of apartments, a single large building or even one floor of a skyscraper.
By contrast, ZIP Codes represent over 7,400 people each.
Customer Segmentation
The benefit of using ZIP+4 codes for marketing intelligence is that they can provide just the right amount of granularity when seeking to effectively direct market to customers.
Depending on marketing needs, a ZIP Code can be too large to tell companies enough about their customers. And information about each individual consumer is time-consuming to process and difficult to obtain.
Here’s an example of how a large home improvement chain would use ZIP+4 data for direct marketing and gaining marketing intelligence…
A home improvement chain retailer has a list of thousands of member addresses across the country, and needs to quickly and efficiently associate those addresses down to precise units of geographies for a targeted direct mail campaign. The ZIP Codes help, but not to the level of precision the retailer requires.
With ZIP+4 centroids that contain address ranges, the retailer can quickly assign addresses directly to ZIP+4 codes along with the associated latitude and longitudes, all powerful tools in launching a direct mail campaign.
After successfully assigning ZIP+4 codes to their members’ addresses, the retailer can now cost-effectively segment and direct market to their members. Having the ZIP+4 codes assigned to addresses will also allow the retailer to use powerful demographic and analytic data to gain greater intelligence about their customers and their customers’ behavior.
Image source: The News & Observer
Maponics ZIP+4 Database
Maponics ZIP+4 database includes 66 million ZIP+4′s, 62 million of which have been assigned a latitude and longitude. We also keep our customers current with quarterly updates, which is especially important for ZIP Code data.
Maponics is so trusted that the USPS refers customers looking for ZIP Code data directly to Maponics. Maponics is the only provider of postal map data that is listed on USPS.com as a resource for postal data, ZIP Code maps, carrier route reports and other postal maps and reports.
Interested in postal data? Contact us – or download our report, Is Your ZIP Code Data Delivering?