Reasons to use an Address Validation Service

15. August 2008
Comments (5)

There are three major reasons to use a third party to validate your Addresses.

Cost: Address Validation service software costs a couple thousand dollars. The vendors charge a huge fee for something that does not see a lot of usage.

Maintenance: The software must be updated regularly to maintain its accuracy. Addresses change all the time and new zip codes get included ect...

Time: Maintenance takes time and time is additional cost. Companies that provide this service keep their software up to date thus letting their customers worry about other business related things. Their fees are a heck of a lot less than the software vendors. It only makes sense to out-source this issue when mailings are done only a few times a year. For example you could spend in excess of $3000 for a piece of software with re-occurring fees to keep it updated. If you outsource the Address Validation Service you not only pay a smaller fee, you pay only when you need it done. You need not spend time on it nor have some one trained to do it.

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The Costs of bad data

15. August 2008
Comments (2)

Bad data in today’s world is prolific. List companies around the world collect data on individuals, companies and institutions on a regular basis. Not all the data remains static. This data is dynamic in nature. People move, names change and companies relocate for multiple reasons. By its very nature, Data involving addresses is volatile.

Billions of dollars is wasted yearly on this bad data. This figure represents wages from the worker stuffing the envelope to the postage and costs creating the material. For example considering time to design, publish and mail costs could be well over $5 per unit. Say you mail 5000 pieces for a total cost of $25,000. Let’s say 3-5% does not get delivered because of the bad data. That is a cool $1250 on mailings that was a complete waste.

Much of your data is old when coming straight from the list company. When was the last time it was validated? It is doubtful that these companies have recently validated your data prior to shipping it. Even if they did a lot of movement happens in a 3 month time frame and could easily make 3-5% of your data invalid and undeliverable. Out of 5000 records it is not unheard of for 150 to 250 of these to be bad records.

If your mailings are undeliverable not only do you lose the money spent to send these mailings you lose possible re-occurring income from conversions. Would it not be wise then to validate your data with an Address Validation Service?


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