Wednesday 28 August 2013

Address Verification With Special Address Book Software

By Celina Heath


Verifying information with specialized address book software can be an important marketing process for businesses that deal with bulk mailings and other important types of marketing mail. This software compares the information entered into it with what the postal service has on official record. This verification is helpful in locating mistakes in things like street names, misspelled towns, incorrect states and incorrect zip codes.

A company's source of information might simply be outdated, due to changes made by the postal service. Zip codes, for instance, can change if an area experiences rapid growth and a single zip code becomes a burden to process mail for. By adding additional zip codes, the work load involved with mail delivery in the area is greatly reduced and efficiency is increased.

Wrong addresses can also end up in a database because of unreadable handwriting. Many mailing lists are compiled through information given on registration forms of information cards that were filled in by hand. Many people have difficult to read handwriting. If the person responsible for data entry encounters problems reading some of that information, the information could be misinterpreted and entered incorrectly by mistake.

Some companies use software that can scan, interpret and then input information from these forms. This is a highly sophisticated business tool, but it is not always reliable. The program has to make a best guess in many situations just to decipher something that resembles an address and it might not always be the correct guess. This happens rather frequently when handwritten information is involved.

Human error can else cause addresses to be entered wrong. A wrong keystroke or even a guess at how something should be spelled can result in a completely incorrect entry that is not even a real address. This can lead to returned mailings or wrong deliveries. When things like this occur, the postage spent is wasted because the mailing never made it to the person it was targeting.

Basically, there are a number of different ways for a wrong address to find its way into a system. By using software to verify this information through the postal service, the problem can be almost completely eliminated. The number of returned or wrongfully delivered mailings with verification is greatly reduced in comparison to the number when verification is not involved.

By increasing the number of mailings that are being correctly delivered, a higher rate of return is generated. A larger number of intended marketing targets will translate to a higher volume of sales. Instead of postage prices being wasted on mailings that end up in the wrong person's hands, the mailings actually make their way to where they were intended to.

Address book software that enables a company to verify mailing list information with the postal services can be a valuable tool for marketing. Less mistakes are made, less postage is wasted and targeted consumers are reached more efficiently. Sales increase in the process and a company's mailing list becomes a useful marketing tool itself.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment