Let’s explore essential elements of address validation. Organizations of all flavors, from e-commerce to logistics to governmental services, utilize address data. Our mission at Service Objects is to make sure that every address in your organization is standardized, accurate and up to date. We help organizations efficiently and reliably use their address data for mail, shipments, statistics, fraud detection, lead routing, marketing strategies and much more.
In this article, we will take you backstage and look at the most important component parts in the realm of address validation: address matching, address formatting and address standardization, address parsing, and address enrichment. Together these things make up the heart and soul of address validation.
Address Matching
Address validation is a process that involves checking to see if an address exists and is mailable. This sounds simple on paper, but with all the variations of addresses that exist in the US and across the globe, it is no small task. If matching an address that an end user filled out in an online form to a list of existing addresses was all it took, anyone and everyone would do it.
In reality, doing address validation well involves a lot of preprocessing of data that happens behind the scenes before a match is even attempted – for example, fixing typos, clearing out non-address such as “Care of” data, and removing unnecessary characters. Other processes that happen are part of our proprietary algorithms.
With the preprocessing done, we are able to match many more addresses. But making matches is just part of the validation process. We don’t merely return a thumbs up or down about an address, and there are often grey areas on a match. For example, we will let you know if the address matched on everything except the street number, or was missing a necessary unit or apartment number, or the unit or apartment number was out of range for that address. We’ll let you know about these situations and many more, and we will even tell you what was corrected in the address match.
Address Enrichment
Besides the levels of address validation, we return valuable additional details that we have learned about the address in question. For example, we will tell you:
- If an address is returning mail
- if an address is vacant
- If an address is residential or not
- If it is high risk or not
- If it is a unique ZIP code
- If it is a military address
- If it is a PO Box or general delivery address
- and more.
The following link contains a list of some of the enrichment items we return in our Address Validation – US 3 product.
The added details you can get from address validation can take your business intelligence to a whole new level. For example, organizations can start making more actionable decisions from data about whether an address is a prison, a hotel, a high-rise building, or a residential address. More importantly, they can be confident in their reports and statistics, because they know that the addresses they are analyzing are correct and are in the location they are supposed to be in.
Address Formatting/Address Standardization
Another part of our solution, address standardization, involves making sure the validated address matches the standard format expected by postal services from across the globe. Each country has different rules and standards on how an address should be formatted, to make sure it is clear and acted upon efficiently in mail or product delivery.
The goal is to make sure addresses can be relied upon in a clear and consistent manner. In the US, for example, Street is abbreviated to ST, and West is conformed to W. Also, there is no “address line two,” unlike what many people think (and some forms allow), and often used for information such as “Care of” or apartment/unit numbers. We make sure that the addresses returned from our services match the accepted standard for the country it comes from – for more details on this, visit the list of supported countries in our Address Validation International product.
Address Parsing
Address parsing involves taking the address and breaking it down into its parts, such as street name, house number, city, state, and ZIP code for a US address. We actually go a step further than that, which is why we call them address fragments, and break out pre and post directionals, suffixes and more. You can review these details for Address Validation – US 3 outputs here.
One recommendation we have for clients is to store all of the data we return from our validation services, normally in a database. Here is one example of where these fragments can come in handy – having fragments such as the street name parsed out and in a separate database field allows for easier searching and better sorting of addresses, versus having house numbers get in the way of sorting techniques.
Conclusion
Tools such as address formatting and standardization, address enrichment, address parsing, and address matching work together to form our overall address validation capabilities. They come together like Voltron (yes, dating myself): on their own they are cool, but together they become something else entirely that is much more powerful.
Address formatting and standardization make sure the results are consistent, address matching makes sure the address is deliverable or mailable, address parsing breaks an address down into its parts to make it easier to handle, and address enrichments make sure you have all the information you nee to make the best business decisions with your data. Each of these concepts have their own defined purpose and place in the address validation process, and come together to help your business get the most out of your contact data assets.
