Rancho Santa Margarita, California - August 08, 2002 (PRN):Data quality services provider Melissa Data today announced the release of Contact Zone, a new data hygiene program for the estimated 40 million users of Microsoft Outlook.

Contact Zone is a Web service that increases desktop productivity by delivering accurate contact information. In just seconds, Contact Zone verifies street addresses, corrects misspellings, updates area codes, and fills in missing data… all in real-time over the Internet for an affordable price.

"Accurate data is at the heart of today's business success," said Raymond Melissa, president of Melissa Data. "The fact that up to 40 percent of address and phone errors occur at the initial time of entry underscores the need for regular database hygiene."

The benefits of having up-to-date records can be measured in increased productivity and better target marketing. By using Contact Zone, businesses and individuals can improve the deliverability of mail and shipments to customers, reduce the quantity of misdialed phone numbers, and save on keystrokes when inputting address information.

In addition to verifying and fixing bad ZIP Codes-the most common problem in an address line-Contact Zone performs other valuable routines such as:

• Standardizes address data to U.S. Postal Service specifications.
• Appends the ZIP 4 Code, which speeds the delivery of mail.
• Corrects misspelled city and street names.
• Fills in city and states just by entering the ZIP Code.
• Updates phone numbers because up to 40 new area codes are assigned each year.
• Provides options for manual address correction.

Customers are finding Contact Zone to be a fast and reliable solution to correcting bad data. "I downloaded Contact Zone and it cleaned up my addresses quicker than a zigzag lightning," commented J.W. Smith, subscriber services manager for the Houston Chronicle.

Contact Zone is powered by Melissa Data's MAILERS 4 CASS-certified address verification engine-a guarantee that records are being verified to meet Unites States Postal Service specifications for accuracy. Contact Zone matches address data against the USPS database of 130 million deliverable addresses.

Contact Zone is now available for download at www.MelissaData.com/cz. Process up to 250 contacts in any folder for free. Premium subscribers may process an unlimited number of records as often as they like for an annual fee of $49.

Contact Zone is compatible with Windows 98, Millennium Edition, NT, 2000 Pro, and XP.

About Melissa Data

Melissa Data provides data quality solutions with emphasis on address and phone verification and correction, postal encoding, and data enhancements. Founded in 1985 by Raymond Melissa, the company is a leading provider of easy-to-use and cost-effective solutions for achieving the highest level of data quality.

For more information, visit www.MelissaData.com

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