By validating addresses through address capture, you attack the problem of poor data collection at the point of entry. Address validation ensures that mail can be delivered to a postal address by comparing it against an authoritative directory like USPS or Canada Post.  

Verifying address data enhances the address data in your system, keeping back end data, continuously updated, standardized, and maintained. Address verification will parse, match, format, transliterate, and enhance address data. It compares your customer and prospects records against a global reference database to reveal how complete and accurate your data really is.  

With consumer data degrading each year by around 15-20% and business data by 30-40%, data maintenance should be the foundation of your data management strategy. Analytics, campaign management, customer experience, and reporting are all underpinned by data quality and can have a significant impact on your business efficiency and reputation. Whilst you can opt for either validating address data when capturing it, or cleansing your data once every so often, to keep your data top-notch you should do both and see them as one complete solution to solve the problem of bad address data.