CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) certification
The United States Postal Service offers CASS certification to all mailers, service bureaus, and software vendors who want to evaluate their address-matching software and improve the quality of their ZIP+4, CRIS, and five-digit coding accuracy.

Conditional variable data
Also referred to as rules-based data, these are variable-information items that are called into a document dependent upon the presence (or absence) of other data, e.g. “if a subject's age is below 35, use photo1a.”

Customization
The creation of documents that are directed to a particular individual’s characteristics, such as age, sex, occupation interests, etc.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Practices for making closer relationships with customers by “remembering” information about their preferences and using the data to communicate with them with more relevance. 

Data mining
The use of a program to query a sophisticated database to either collect specific information or analyze the data to find usable patterns.

Mail merge
The merging of new items from a database with static data in letters or other documents.  In typical mail-merge operations, both static and variable data are merged onto the page and the entire page is RIPed as one entity.

PAVE (Presort Accuracy, Validation, and Evaluation)
PAVE is a USPS certification and process designed in cooperation with the mailing industry to evaluate presort software and determine its accuracy in sorting address files according to domestic mail manual (DMM) standards.

Personalization
The creation of documents that are directed to a particular individual by using their personal data, such as name, address, etc.

Relational positioning
The capability of a variable data program to assign page layout positions to variable elements dependent upon the positions of other elements on a page.

Static data
The portion of a page or document that is used without change on multiple copies of a page or document.

USPS
United States Post Office

Variable data
The portion of a page or document that changes according to the target recipient of the document, thereby requiring new data to be merged with the static data to produce the final document.

VDP application software
Software and hardware combination that allows the designer to create the variable data design that has been requested. This software may involve creation of the final form document through the use of the merging process. The merging process involves combing the static content, text and graphics, with the variable content, text and graphics, into a final form, PPML/VDX file.

VDP digital preflight
Activity involving the variable data exchange file which verifies that all content and resource data as intended by the sender are present.

Versioning
The creation of documents that are directed to a particular demographic or logical grouping of individuals, such as all men over 50 in the U.S.