New 42-day free trial Get it now

RecommendedSmarty's January 2026 release adds parcel boundaries, provisional addresses, and smarter international geocodingJanuary 27, 2026 Smarty customers avoid USPS rate limitingJanuary 20, 2026 Provider data accuracy: Regulatory compliance and hidden network risksJanuary 15, 2026

Address data masterclass webinar recap

WEBINAR RECAP: In this recap, we’re going over the ins and outs of address data. Learn about address components, ZIP9, ZIP11, non-postals, and other hacks.

Andrew Townsend

Andrew Townsend

Updated October 29, 2025

Tags

Address standardization

Address quality

Address validation

Address verification

US Address Validation API

WEBINAR RECAP: In this recap, we’re going over the ins and outs of address data. Learn about address components, ZIP9, ZIP11, non-postals, and other hacks.

In this webinar, our geocoding and address expert Adam Charlton went over the ins and outs of address data. He gave details about address components and how they influence the way an address is composed. He also dove into the difference between ZIP9 and ZIP11, what a non-postal is, and other address hacks you didn’t learn in primary school.

Standardization and validation

What exactly is a valid address? There are lots of different definitions depending on what your goal is with the address. For example, a parking lot address could be a valid address for a real estate developer, but not for package delivery.

The same goes for USPS valid addresses, parcel validation, or non-USPS valid addresses.

Ultimately you need to decide how you are going to standardize for your needs to ensure that addresses are written the way that is most useful to you. Keep in mind that improperly standardizing addresses can cause significant problems.

Address anatomy

In the webinar, Adam outlined the following address components and how they inform address systems.

Primary Number
Pre Direction
Street Name
Street Suffix
Post Direction
Secondary Designator
Secondary Number
City
State
ZIP

ZIP Codes

Tending to lead to confusion, the secrets of ZIP Codes were unraveled. You can learn everything you need to know about ZIP Codes in this article and ZIP+4 Codes in this article if you’d rather not watch the video.

Did you know that ZIP Codes can overlap areas and cross state/county boundaries? Did you know that a ZIP Code often corresponds to a street segment, not just a block of a city or town?

Geocoding

Finally, Adam took us through the benefits and basic levels of Geocode accuracy. He did suggest that for those who are looking to learn more about Geocoding and perhaps interested in a deeper dive on the topic you should check out the recording of his Geocoding webinar.

Looking to start standardizing and validating addresses?

Get a free trial of the world's best address validation tools and start improving the quality of your address database today!

View the full webinar recording here

Subscribe to our blog!

Learn more about RSS feeds here.

Read our recent posts

Smarty's January 2026 release adds parcel boundaries, provisional addresses, and smarter international geocoding

OREM, UT, Jan 27, 2026—Smarty®, an expert in address data intelligence, today announced a three-part release designed to help organizations turn messy, fast-changing location data into operational confidence. The January 2026 bundle introduces: 1) A brand-new parcel dataset, 2) Expands provisional address programs into core U. S. products, and 3) Upgrades Smarty’s International Geocoding engine—giving organizations more precision and more usable signals for automation at scale. “Address data is never ‘done.

Effective Slack communication: The Smarty way

Slack is incredible—until it becomes overwhelming, distracting, and hard to manage. Every company eventually reaches that moment when the friendly hum of collaboration turns into a full-blown notification blizzard. Messages pile up. Channels multiply like rabbits. Every ping feels urgent. Suddenly, your team’s deep-focus time feels like an optional side quest, not part of their job. At Smarty, we’ve lived this story. We’ve also learned how to fix it. Now we want to help other organizations create Slack environments that feel lighter, faster, and dramatically more supportive of real work.

Smarty customers avoid USPS rate limiting

TLDR: Smarty customers won’t feel a thing from the new USPS API restrictions because Smarty doesn’t depend on USPS’s real-time APIs to do address verification. We’ve always used our own, powerful, hyper-accurate data to back our tools and support client needs. While USPS is capping its address verification service at 60 requests per hour and retiring the legacy Web Tools API on January 25, Smarty keeps verifying addresses at full speed on our own infrastructure. We ingest USPS data updates monthly and run verification internally, so USPS API changes, rate limits, or even a temporary USPS outage don’t ripple into your workflows.

Ready to get started?