Majority of consumers’ purchasing experience starts online. An online consumer’s online experience typically starts with an Internet search. These interactions are critical to fundamental businesses processes.

A company starts by getting the prospect’s e-mail address and employing various online marketing strategies from there. E-mails remain the main channel for sending offers, product information, and other promotional information to existing and prospective customers. In the same vein, an online e-commerce platform relies on the accuracy of the buyer’s postal address for parcel deliveries.

Such are the two main reasons organizations need to keep an updated database of clients, including their addresses. To deliver the correct information, products, and services to the right recipient at the right place and time, companies need to perform address validation, especially when it comes to postal addresses.

So, what is address validation and how do companies benefit from it? Let’s find out.

What is Address Validation?

Address verification is the process of validating the accuracy and existence of a street or postal address. This can be done by keying in an address in a software, app, or a website such as https://www.lob.com, or by cleansing, matching, and formatting database information, and comparing it to the reference postal address data.

These programs have integrated location technology systems that convert the postal address entered by the user to its equivalent latitude and longitude coordinates, allowing for geospatial analysis to ensure that the address exists and to pinpoint the precise location of the address entered.

Address validation can help distinguish between the coordinates of either non-valid and valid addresses. Ideally, all companies should strive to have valid addresses, but human errors can sometimes get in the way, leading to non-valid addresses which require manual re-checking.

Address validations consist of three main components:

• Cleansing: This involves correcting typographical errors such as misspelled street names.
• Supplementation: Enables the user to input the complete details of the postal address, such as the house number, street name, and zip or postal codes.
• Formatting: Refers to activities that create the standard data collection elements. These include formatting and parsing, which dictate how and in which order the address should be written down (i.e., abbreviations vs complete name, etc.)

If you’re still on the fence about the benefits of address validation, these reasons may be able to convince you that it’s a worthwhile investment:

1. Increases Delivery Speed

With address validation, a client’s postal address is checked for accuracy as it pinpoints the exact location of a specific entry. Among many things, this helps delivery personnel locate the recipient’s address immediately and without snags.

In some occasions, an unvalidated address with typographical errors can be corrected by the parcel delivery service company itself. However, delivery will take some time, which could negatively impact the customer’s impression of your services.

2. Reduces Returned Mail Errors

If your business has no way of verifying clients’ addresses, it may lead to several instances of returned mail. If these errors happen in increasing frequency, it could translate to missed opportunities and higher costs of doing business that are going to waste.

This is especially true for companies that offer mail-in subscriptions or nonprofits relying on mail solicitations from potential donors.

3. Helps Improve Customer Satisfaction

An online purchase transaction is not considered completed until the recipient or end-user receives the merchandise. One of the worst things that can happen to your company is to experience delayed deliveries and shipping mistakes due to an unvalidated address.

A disgruntled customer will likely blame your company for the mishap. Or worse, he could share his unfavorable experience to social media platforms and your website. This can put a dent on your company’s reputation as a service provider.

Validating an address helps prevent typographical errors from ruining your deliveries, ensuring that your products reach the right customers at the right time. Done in a consistent manner, personalized customer service helps promote customer retention.

4. Saves Valuable Time

By ensuring that the addresses in your list are verified, your team no longer needs to spend extra time finding ways to check addresses, attempt re-deliveries, and re-visit lead generation, as well as marketing strategies.

These efforts may take too much of your team’s time, especially the logistics and marketing departments. Ensuring the correctness of a postal address can take a chunk off your business marketing and logistical efforts, so your organization can focus on more important strategies.

5. Cost-Effective

Besides dramatically reducing or completely eliminating the incidences of mail delivery failures and saving a great deal of time, address validation can help deliveries become more systematic and cost-effective. For instance, your logistics efforts can save on fuel costs by coming up with a more efficient route to deliver parcels from your warehouse to addresses within a certain locality.

6. Improves Marketing Strategy

Address validation can also be applied to electronic mails, too, as an email verifier software works the same way as postal address validations apps. An email verifier enables organizations to validate email addresses by entering categories such as first and last name, domain name, or business name.

By using this type of software, a business can easily identify whether its address list needs to be cleaned and updated or if marketing efforts need to be adjusted to become more targeted and efficient (or both).

7. Leads to Accurate Client Profiling

Updating your client database is important in making sure that your marketing campaigns and products, as well as services, are reaching your intended clients. Address validation is the first step in making these things possible.

Getting rid of unverified addresses manually takes time, so it’s best to invest in a software to reduce your updating time and effort.

8. Helps Enhance Brand Reputation

Maintaining accurate information, including a validated address, can help your sales and customer service teams deliver appropriate services to your clients, depending on their needs. Impeccable customer service, like responding promptly to inquiries, deliveries, and post-sales phases, enhances customer experience and brand reputation.

Customer satisfaction strengthens your brand reputation by promoting a positive public perception of your company.

Final Thoughts

Address validation can help your company process information in a more efficient manner. Whether needed to follow up on marketing, customer service, marketing campaigns, and other major business activities, a verified address list ensures that your brand and your client stay connected.