What Is Address Validation? Benefits and Use Cases Explained

Did you know that on average, 4% of businesses’ mailing lists are undeliverable?

The DMA reports that for some mailing lists, this number could be as high as 10%.

Sending mail to bad addresses can be costly… which begs the question:

How much money is your business leaving on the table?

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to remove bad addresses from your list, and that’s by using an address validation tool.

In this article, you’re going to discover what address validation is, as well as its various use cases.

What Is Address Validation?

Address validation (sometimes called address verification) is the process of checking the addresses on your mailing list to ensure that they are valid.

Sounds simple, right? But it can take a significant amount of time to do this by yourself, especially if you have a large mailing list.

That’s where address validation tools come in.

An address validation tool is a specially designed software that verifies the mailing addresses on your list (or in real-time when a customer enters their address) by cross-referencing them against an authoritative address database.

What Are the Benefits of Address Verification?

Now that you know exactly what address validation is, let’s go through some of the benefits it can offer to your business.

Here are the main ones:

1. Save Money

Undelivered mail can be costly.

The USPS reports that businesses spend more than $20 billion on mail that can’t be delivered.

Of course, that figure doesn’t include opportunity costs (for example, missing out on would-be buyers because they didn’t receive your mail).

By validating the addresses you’re sending to, not only do you save money on postage costs, but you make even more money by making sure that your mail is actually being delivered.

2. Improve Customer Relations

As a customer, there’s nothing worse than buying a product that never arrives.

But this isn’t always the business’s fault. Sometimes, it’s the customers for entering the wrong postal address.

However, by using an address validation tool and using it on your order page, you can easily ensure that your customers are entering their correct addresses every time.

3. Save Time

Address validation can help you cut down on the amount of customer service you or your representatives have to deal with (for instance, customers complaining that they haven’t a document or an order).

In addition, you won’t have to spend time (and money) having to handle and reship returned packages.

Address Validation Use Cases

Address verification has many use cases.

The most common ones are:

1. Direct Mail Marketing

Address validation is essential for direct mail marketers.

So much so, it could literally be the factor that makes or breaks your direct mail campaign.

You see, the fewer invalid addresses you have on your mailing list, the higher your ROI will be because you won’t be paying “pointless” postage costs for mail that never gets opened.

As we mentioned earlier, an average of 4% of companies’ mailing lists are undeliverable.

That means postage costs alone mean you could be losing thousands of dollars on every direct mail campaign, and that number is even higher when you factor in the cost of the materials inside your letters.

2. eCommerce

Shipping goods to customers can be expensive, so it’s essential that they end up at the right address.

But it’s not just about the money—getting shipping wrong can also upset your customer and put your store at risk of receiving negative reviews.

As a result, many eCommerce companies use address verification on their order pages which require customers to select their address from a list of options that appear when they begin typing it in.

3. Logistics

Logistics and delivery companies also use a software to ensure that the addresses on their packages exist before they deliver them, ultimately saving these companies time and money.

Address validation also has the knock-on effect of improving the delivery times for all of their other recipients.

4. Data Management

Pretty much every company can use address validation to improve the quality of their information by ensuring their customer data is correct.

This can be helpful for companies that send their customers letters regarding bills, loans, or any other type of correspondence.

How to Start Using Address Validation in Your Business

Now that we’ve covered how important address validation is, you may be wondering how to start using it in your own business.

Fortunately, that couldn’t be easier to do. You can try out our address verification software free today to validate your first 200 addresses.

Our address validation tool is powered by the most accurate global location data, which means you can confidently verify your customer addresses no matter which country they are in.

Our software helps you validate your customer addresses in bulk, and it also includes a real-time API that you can add to your site to make sure that your customers’ addresses are correct upon entry.

Not only that, but our tool also helps you standardize your US and Canadian addresses so that they are in a consistent format that makes your data management easier.

Conclusion

Having bad addresses on your mailing list can be costly… which is why using an address validation tool is essential for all kinds of businesses including direct mail marketers, eCommerce stores, and even logistics companies.

By using this tool today, you can save your business time, money, and also improve customer relations.

To get started, we recommend you click here to try our address validation tool free for your first 200 addresses.