Why Do Businesses Need a Smart Address Lookup Tool and How Does It Work?
Have you thought about dealing with problems of data management? Missing details, incorrect mailing addresses, outdated information, etc., are some of the prime problems every company faces.
If you are looking for a solution, look no more because address lookup can help solve these issues!
You need a robust tool to help you identify invalid delivery addresses and modify them. Thus, you can avoid sending shipments to invalid or incorrect addresses—leading to losses.
An Address Lookup API tool like PostGrid allows you to cross-confirm addresses using an authoritative database like Australia Post. It also helps you auto-complete delivery addresses and reformats them as per the postal guidelines. These things can enable you to fetch huge postal discounts and mail accurately.
There are several more reasons to consider using official address lookup and ensuring cent per cent accuracy always. This blog will help you understand these reasons and uncover the benefits of using such solutions.
We will also talk about the different types of address lookup, allowing you to decide which one suits your needs.
Let’s begin!
What is Address Lookup?
One of the biggest challenges of running a retail and e-commerce business is spotting fake orders. Some people may order products from your website using imaginary or made-up addresses. Thus, it is crucial to run a quick check and see whether these orders are legit. But what is the easiest way to do so?
Thankfully, address lookup helps you catch such fake addresses instantly. It allows you to know if an address is invalid and undeliverable. Plus, it helps correct addresses that have some minor mistakes, like spelling errors, missing postcodes, etc.
Apart from eCommerce companies, almost every other company also faces such problems. Healthcare companies need an address lookup service like PostGrid to verify their records. And real estate businesses may need it to confirm property details.
Most customers don’t double-check their delivery addresses while filling offline or online forms. So, you can do that for them instead and guarantee that everything falls in place!
Hence, address lookup refers to the cross-verification of mailing information for several purposes. It is also known as address verification or validation.
How Does An Address Lookup Tool Work?
Address lookup services help you validate your mailing lists within seconds via digital methods. For instance, PostGrid compares every delivery address on your list with Australia Post’s database. If it finds a match, the address is marked valid. Otherwise, it figures out the issues and makes the necessary corrections.
The entire process comprises several steps, including:
- Address Autocomplete: It is the first step of confirming the accuracy of a location. Autocomplete ensures that your address is complete and has no missing details. Most companies integrate our address verification API into their website to allow users to enter their addresses within a few keystrokes. The second they start typing, the API shows them a list of suggestions to select from and proceed with.
- Parsing: Address lookup verifies every element of the address—street number and name, city, state, and postcode. Parsing helps break down mailing addresses into their respective fields for more precise validation.
- Standardisation: Another significant step for companies to undertake is to mention fully-formatted addresses on their mail items. They need to be according to the Australia Post’s address format. There are only a few rules, like using state abbreviations, mentioning the entire postcode, etc. But, it is daunting to look out for such things if you are dealing with thousands of addresses every week. Free address lookup can standardise each address without any manual effort from your end.
- Validating: Validation is the final step of address lookup. It makes your invalid addresses deliverable and mail-ready. Then, you can use your verified mailing lists for data management, planning, marketing, shipping orders, etc.
Imagine you run a dental clinic, and a patient mentions the address-
58 Georgian Street, Sydney, New South Wales 4003
PostGrid’s address lookup service can easily spot the mistake and validate the delivery address in no time.
Here’s the validated version of the address:
58 GEORGE STREET
SYDNEY NSW 4003
Why Should Businesses Use Address Lookup?
We have already established that address lookup is crucial for a business. But, there are several more use cases apart from saving your staff from spending weeks of their time verifying addresses manually. Gone are the days when your sales and marketing team members were required to call up every customer and ask them for their correct address.
Below, we have compiled all the possible reasons you should use an address lookup tool:
Populate Address Fields Speedily
A website’s user experience (UX) depends on several factors, like:
- The response time of your menu buttons
- Availability of your product details
- A seamless checkout process
Address lookup can help you with the last pointer significantly. By using an autocomplete solution, you can let customers reduce checkout times and motivate them to complete their transactions.
It also helps boost your brand reputation as customers appreciate businesses embracing the latest technologies. Naturally, incorporating address lookup into your website allows you to generate more sales.
Other companies in insurance, education, and nonprofit industries can also benefit from an address lookup service. For instance, universities can use it to allow students to fill in their accurate details speedily. Or, an insurance agency can help customers fill up the contact form.
Prevent Shipping Errors
Australia Post delivered 2.6 billion mail items in 2021. With such heavy workloads, you cannot expect the Post Office to send your mail on time if you don’t mention the correct delivery address. Typically, these items might get lost, delayed, misplaced, or returned to the sender.
Using address lookup, you can avoid shipping errors and guarantee that your mail reaches the correct recipients. For most companies, address lookup has become a necessity that gives them peace of mind while mailing their items.
You can use this tool for sending any item, like cheques, invoices, postcards, newsletters, etc. Hence, it is flexible and tends to all your mailing needs altogether.
Conduct Effective Marketing Campaigns
Launching direct mail campaigns might seem expensive and hectic. But, with such high response rates, it is worth the effort and investment. Furthermore, you can save up to 75% of costs by automating print and mail with PostGrid.
Luckily, PostGrid’s address lookup service also helps you send your marketing items to relevant prospects. Thus, we help you plan affordable, effective mailing campaigns—and allow you to send marketing mail to accurate addresses. It’s a win-win for your company in all aspects!
Operational Planning
Operational planning is a very underrated use case of address lookup. To help you understand better, let’s consider an example:
Suppose XYZ company wants to open up a retail store but is confused about its location. In this case, the best option is to find a place where most of its existing and potential customers reside.
Real-time address lookup can help the company identify such locations easily. It also allows them to spot customer-dense localities for promotional purposes.
Hence, you can verify and organise your customers’ mailing addresses and use them for planning numerous things that would help your business grow.
Advantages of Address Lookup Services
Now, let’s discuss some other benefits you can bag by employing an address lookup tool:
Improve Your Database Quality
No business wants to have an inaccurate database that restricts them from developing further. Informative and correct data helps companies in decision-making. And, address lookup can help them improve the quality of their existing data.
You can run address checks frequently, like every week or every month. It helps your business stay updated and always have access to precise information.
Drive More Conversions
Address lookup helps you complete orders on time. Imagine getting your mail delivered on the exact delivery date and superseding your customers’ expectations. If you have a correct mailing, you can also presort your items and help Australia Post deliver them faster than usual.
These things can help you gain your customers’ trust and encourage them to buy from you again.
Also, as discussed earlier, address lookup adds to your website’s UX—driving more and more sales each day.
Reduce Manual Inputs
An address lookup tool like PostGrid allows businesses to eliminate manual effort entirely. Hence, your staff members need not type in customer addresses themselves. Your customers also don’t need to type in anything as the tool automatically detects their address using geocoding.
Such advanced technologies offered by address lookup services make them a must to use for businesses. Using these solutions, you can help your sales and marketing teams perform better because they no longer need to manage customer data themselves. Instead, they can concentrate more on conversions and work systematically.
Boost Brand Loyalty and Customer Retention
Businesses can boost brand awareness and loyalty by offering impeccable customer support. It involves everything from processing orders speedily to sending onboarding letters to new customers. Here are some things you can do for your customers using a free address lookup tool:
- Reduce response times whenever a customer contacts you to enquire about their orders
- Reach out to old, long-term customers with thank-you letters to express your appreciation. Such correspondence can help you re-engage customers if they no longer buy from you
- Send marketing mail to your target audience to increase brand visibility
Types of Address Lookup Services
You can choose from several types of address lookup tools to match your business requirements. Here are the most commonly-used ones:
Fuzzy Matching
Fuzzy matching address lookup allows you to deal with:
- Misspellings
- Capitalisation errors
- Incorrect spacing
- Transposed characters
- Incorrect abbreviations
- Common typos, etc.
You may believe that such minor issues cannot hinder your operations. But, in reality, even small mistakes can lead to huge losses. Thus, fuzzy matching solves them beforehand and then verifies your addresses.
Geocoding
Another type of address lookup is geocoding. It helps you assign geographical coordinates to places and map them out accurately.
Geocoding API is especially helpful to location-specific industries, like real estate and insurance. Using the geocodes of particular places, they can plan their operations and make crucial decisions.
Also, geocoding helps in precise address capture. This address lookup tool allows businesses to capture their customers’ mailing information using their IP addresses. Hence, it is quick, efficient, and accurate.
Type-Ahead Address Verification
Type-ahead address verification is one of the best forms of address lookup. It is similar to address autocomplete, wherein users get a list of address suggestions once they start typing.
Thus, type-ahead address verification saves time and reduces manual mistakes.
Partial Address Lookup
Partial address lookup is an apt choice for your business if you only need to verify a few elements of your mailing addresses. Suppose you only operate in Sydney—then, you don’t need to verify the city name all the time. Instead, you may need address lookup to double-check only street names and numbers.
However, most address validation and verification services offer to validate the entire address for added accuracy.
Bulk Address Verification
Bulk address validation services like PostGrid allow businesses to verify thousands of mailing addresses in one go. Our API can process millions of requests simultaneously, enabling you to validate any number of addresses as needed.
Thus, you can launch bulk mailing campaigns effortlessly without worrying about checking the accuracy of so many addresses.
Real-Time Address Lookup
This address lookup service is the exact opposite of bulk verification. Instead of validating addresses in bulk whenever needed, real-time verification refers to checking them at the point of entry.
Hence, it blocks all incorrect addresses from entering your system from the beginning. It is a more effective way of handling your database. However, bulk address verification is still helpful to companies that aren’t starting from scratch and need to verify their existing addresses.
How Can PostGrid’s Address Lookup Services Help Businesses?
PostGrid’s address lookup API has several valuable features to offer to your company, like:
AMAS-Verified Addresses
AMAS stands for Address Matching Approval System and refers to a certification program by Australia Post. It measures the precision levels of an address lookup service.
PostGrid is AMAS-certified and uses the Australia Post database to verify your lists. This way, we are able to offer 99.99% deliverability and help you confidently mail items to the correct addresses.
Quick and Easy Set-Up
Our API can be integrated with several popular platforms, including Zapier, Hubspot, Marketo, etc. Thus, you can print and mail items directly from your system. The set-up does not require more than a few minutes, and our technical assistance team is available 24 x 7 for you.
Also, any company can use our address lookup tool effortlessly. Our flexible pricing plans allow businesses of all sizes to start validating their lists according to their needs.
Multiple Usage Options
You can use our address verification API or software to verify your delivery addresses. The only difference is that you can integrate our API into your mobile app, website, or CRM. Thus, it has more applications and promotes real-time address lookup.
On the contrary, our software is helpful for bulk address verification to help you verify your existing mailing lists.
Luckily, PostGrid offers all the types of address lookup we discussed above, making us your best choice!
International Address Lookup
PostGrid offers address validation solutions for 245+ countries around the globe. Therefore, you can expand your business beyond borders and mail anywhere you need.
Managing international addresses is complicated because there are thousands of language scripts. Moreover, you also need to follow the postal specifications of the destination country to help your mail item get there on time.
Our address lookup service allows you to verify addresses of any country with the same speed and accuracy as national addresses.
Analytics
You can now access in-depth analytics and insights on every API transaction. Furthermore, you may keep tabs on all validated addresses—helping you eradicate duplicates and manage your data more efficiently.
Wrapping Up
Address lookup makes data management and mailing a breeze for companies. It helps them identify undeliverable mailing addresses and replace them with valid and correct ones. Plus, the entire process takes place digitally, where you only need to click a few buttons and sit back.
There are several ways to employ an address lookup tool as a part of your daily operations. You can use it any number of times you want, but take care to enquire about such things before deciding which service provider to choose.
PostGrid offers the most affordable address lookup rates in Australia. Plus, the quality of the mailing addresses validated through our services is impeccable. You can check out our pricing plans here!
We hope this blog helps you learn the significance of address verification. Undoubtedly, it affects every aspect of your business from customer acquisition to retention. Also, you no longer need to spend thousands of dollars in vain over mail returns and lost shipments.
Ready to verify your mailing lists and save tons of your time, effort, and money? Request a demo now to see how PostGrid’s address lookup tool can help you achieve these goals!
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Start transforming and automating your offline communications with PostGrid
The post Address Lookup: How does Real-Time Address Lookup Service Work? appeared first on PostGrid.
Via https://www.postgrid.com.au/address-lookup-use-cases-benefits-and-services/
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