Address verification and validation - When location is everything

In this blog series, we look at how address verification can support your business. In Forrester’s Location Intelligence Drives Competitive Edge In The Digital Age study, over half (51%) of firms reported that the poor quality of their location data is one of the biggest inhibitors to location intelligence. Address verification improves conversion and business efficiencies, and the quality of the data is essential. This, the third blog of the series, takes a closer look at the importance of data quality and recency.

Address Verification – Data Quality

As we covered in the second blog of this series “The Importance of User Experience” not all address verification solutions use the same sources and this impact on data quality affects user experience. However, it isn’t just the user that misses out. Poor data quality will reduce online transactions, customer onboarding and identity verification, all of which impact revenue.

So, what is the answer? Simple, find a solution that uses official postal authority and trusted third party data. For example, the fact that Google uses mapping data opposed to postal data and its data updates are more sporadic compared to Loqate, where in some cases the data is updated daily. No matter how good the algorithm is, if the address isn’t in the database, it won’t be found and so it is vital to use a solution that can guarantee the highest match rate. 

Address Verification – Data Recency  

The source of data used by an address verification solution is not the only consideration. As we know, data is changing all the time. In FY17 USPS made changes to 37 million addresses and added 1.1 million addresses to their systems. This means that it’s imperative that address databases are updated as frequently as possible.

At Loqate, we update our UK data on a daily basis, US addresses on a monthly basis and for the rest of the world, we update our database as soon as our suppliers update theirs. In comparison, Google’s updates are sporadic and undocumented, so quality is invariably negatively impacted.

Address Verification - Global Data

Loqate is market leader for global data, its address verification technology will parse, standardise, verify, cleanse and format address data for over 245 countries and territories, all via a single, easy to integrate API. Loqate’s address verification also transliterates words or letters from different global character sets into either native or Roman characters across 8 scripts including: Cyrillic, Hellenic, Hebrew, Kanji, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Thai, Hangul. So, if your business operates on a global scale, you can be assured that data quality is optimised. This is not matched by other address verification solutions.

Address Verification -  Matching Capabilities

Typos, spacing and transposition errors can all impact on address verification results. Using a solution that picks up all of these will increase your match rate and reduce potential errors that cost your business money and productivity. At Loqate, we have 5 out of 5 fuzzy matching capabilities meaning it picks up all methods of typos, spacing and transposition errors, this is not always the case for other solutions. Let’s compare Loqate and Google.

Figure 1. Loqate versus Google fuzzy matching

In addition to the 5 out of 5 fuzzy matching capabilities, Loqate provides an indication of the validity of each address value included in the input address, reducing costly errors for your business. Google, however charges you for all searches, even if a valid match is not found.

Address Verification – Data Cleansing

Data deteriorates over time, keeping accurate data helps you to improve business performance. Address verification is not just about improving identity verification, customer engagement and onboarding, it can also be used to cleanse and enhance your existing CRM database.

Solutions that offer data cleansing eradicate the need to manually correct customer data, which can be a major drain on your marketing and sales budget. Automated data cleansing:

1. Improves data quality,
2. Enables you to clean multiple data files before merging
3. Provides data for customer insight, profiling and targeting purposes.

Loqate’s address cleansing solution offers global back office address data verification, cleansing & enhancing solution that fits your system requirements and delivers the most complete and accurate data available.

Address Verification - Data Security & Privacy

Data security and privacy has never been more important. At Loqate, we take it seriously; your date is your data. Data protection is at the core of what we do, and we only use your data for the services you use. We never share your data. This is Incorporated in our EULA. We are ISO 27001 accredited and trusted by 13, 000 customers.

Loqate is a Trusted Partner to IBM, we do a lot of business together on behalf of our joint clients. Loqate delivers trusted technology, good support and I would recommend them.

Did you know that data quality and pricing models can significantly impact your budget? In part four of this series we'll look at pricing models and how solutions such as Google could end up being more expensive than you anticipate. 

Loqate is the world’s most trusted data specialist in location intelligence for businesses of all sizes and sectors. Find out more about Loqate address verification.