Sending letters, packages, and other items has its risks. What if the address is incomplete or the recipient has moved? Three essential address verification services work together to reduce risk and improve deliverability.
Improve deliverability with address verification services
Service Objects’ DOTS Address Validation – US along with companion services DOTS Address Detective and DOTS NCOA (National Change of Address) work together to ensure that all addresses are as genuine, accurate, and current as possible. While the main address validation service does most of the heavy lifting, DOTS Address Detective and DOTS NCOA provide added services when addresses are incomplete, too messy (or fuzzy), or when a person hasn’t reported a change of address to you.
To better understand how these three address verification services work together, let’s first look at each service’s strengths:
DOTS Address Validation – US is our primary address verification service. It will clean, standardize, and validate the vast majority of addresses. In most instances, this address validation service will produce a clean result. However, it doesn’t take chances with messy addresses due to the risk of falling out of CASS compliance. And that’s where DOTS Address Detective is a great backup!
DOTS Address Detective is a great tool for fixing all those addresses that don’t pass address verification. Should an address be deemed too messy or incomplete, Address Detective can help. It searches other data points, cross-referencing its findings to safely validate and standardize the address to a strong probable match.
DOTS NCOA (National Change of Address) such as when an address is found to be vacant or returning mail, DOTS NCOA can step in. NCOA can search for a new address if name information is available. We recommend running NCOA periodically to cross-reference validated addresses with a name to confirm that a change of address hasn’t been filed.
Using all three Address Verification services
All three of these address verification services work together to improve the accuracy of addresses within your database.
For example, let’s say you run a large list of addresses through DOTS Address Validation – US. While the vast majority of addresses are validated and standardized, AV3 comes back with three problematic addresses:
- The first has a street address that’s too messy for DOTS Address Validation to change: 155eviadelabegonia.
- The second address exists but is determined to be vacant.
- The third returns a “Domain Specific” error (which means the service completed, but the result is not good) with a DPV value of 2 (firm/highrise name conflict), 3 (multiple addresses match), or 4 (insufficient address data.)
In the first case, use DOTS Address Detective. It will search for clues to determine that 155eviadelabegonia is actually 155 East Via de la Begonia.
For the address that exists but turns out to be vacant, run NCOA Live to try to get the proper mailing address. In this case, the occupant most likely moved to a new address. NCOA Live helps you to find that new address and append it to your contact record.
In the third case, use Address Detective’s Operation FindAddressWithNamePhone to search for the address data along with your contact’s name and phone number to get better address data. These additional parameters help the address verification service find a better match.
Using DOTS Address Validation – US on its own is great; using these three address verification services in conjunction with one another is excellent.
