Introduction
COMPULIFE's "Postal Code Analyzer" does a lot more than just help you determine where a postal code is in relationship to another. The Postal Code Analyzer provides you with important information about the relative value of one postal code over another. We think that with this new information a lot of subscribers are going to want to grab available postal codes that have more apparent value than others.
The following will describe how the Postal Code Analyzer works.
First, the system gives you the opportunity to enter 3 values:
1. Postal Code - the postal code you want to analyze
2. Number of Listed Postal Codes - these are postal codes already spoken for in the state. These will either have 1, 2 or 3 subscribers already listed.
3. Number of Vacant Postal Codes - this will include vacant postal codes that have no subscribers currently listed
Tutorial / Example
It may be helpful to print this tutorial and then go back to the Postal Code Analyzer to follow along. *Some of the following details may have changed since this tutorial was written.
To learn the system and the logic behind it, let's begin with an example of the postal code that Compulife is located in.
Enter the value of N2M for the postal code.
Next, leave the default number of subscriber listings at 100. In this case you will not get 100 results because there are much less that 100 term4sale postal code listings in the province of Ontario.
Next, leave the default number of vacant postal codes set at 10.
Once those values have been entered, click on "Analyze This". Your report will be generated almost instantly.
The first column of information is titled "Subscribers Listed" and is the total number of subscribers who are already listed in that postal code.
NOTE: There is 1 subscribers actually listed in N2M and so the number in the first column is 1.
The third column is titled "Distance" and advises you how many kilometers the postal code is located from the postal code that you entered. In this case, the first postal code is 0 kilometers away because it is the postal code that you requested. The next postal code is N2G which is 1.8 kilometers away, and so on.
"Distance" is the default sort order of the report. For the purpose of the tutorial, let's not play with other sorting options until further in the tutorial.
The fourth column is called "Population". This column, with the next column, will be VERY, VERY important information that helps you value one postal code listing versus another.
The fifth column is the "Number of Households".
Back to our example of N2M. You will notice that the postal code with the highest number of households is postal code N0M, which is 81.6 kilometers from the postal code that we are analyzing, which is N2M.
To make it easier to identify postal codes with the greatest number of households, click on the header for the 5th column, which says "Number of Households". The first time you click on it, the column and listings are ordered from the smallest number of households to greatest. Click that same header again, and the greatest number of households moves to the top of the list. You will now see that the highest postal code number of households is for postal code N0M, followed by M2N, followed by L0R, etc.
Once you have identified that, you will then need to determine which of those codes is more important to you, number of households versus population.
Of course postal codes that already have 3 people listed in them, will not be available for you to be listed in. For more information about listing rules, keep reading. The rules will be changing for listing priorities, and will be changing again in a year, based upon actual consumer email contacts with subscribers.
Once again, with this important information now in hand we suspect that there will be a lot of subscribers who want to re-shuffle their listings. With that in mind, the next section of the bulletin is a review of the updated rules.
Back to our tutorial. Let's take a closer look at postal code N0M. If you think that is a postal code that might be good for you, then you need to go back to the top of the page and replace N2M with N0M; click the "Analyze This" button again. This will now reorganize the report with the focus on N0M. You can see what other postal codes surround that postal code.
IMPORTANT: It would make no sense to purchase postal codes next to N0M, such as N4X. The fact that no one is listed in N4X means that the system will look for people that are listed near N4X. To see that listing, enter in N4X and click on "Analyze This". You will see that the first postal code with a listed subscriber is N0M. Next is N0K followed by N5X. Providing that the same subscriber is not listed in more than one of those postal codes, that will be the list given to the consumer. Needless to say, if you want N4X, you are better to actually take N0M.
The next step in the tutorial is to search postal code L7L. We are looking at that postal code because there are already 3 subscribers listed; note that the postal code is full. But if you are looking to be listed in that area, you will notice postal code L6L which is about the 5th code on the list. There is only one subscriber in that postal code and it is open for others to be listed.