All posts by John Hickey - Product Marketing Manager

Your business generates data with every digital ad you run, every purchase order, every promotional mailing, and every customer survey you do. And every time one campaign wraps up, another starts. Developing a solid database cleansing and consolidation strategy can help prevent a database full of holes and information gaps. Why does database cleansing matter? Your revenue will diminish if you rely on bad data to make strategic business decisions. In our ebook, 5 Ways Companies Use Address Verification to Improve Business Results, we discuss how to use address verification software to cleanse databases and merge datasets.

Every business executive knows that good data is critical. When you’re developing your sales strategy and talking about how to increase revenue, you probably turn to data to answer questions like these: - What areas of growth can we exploit? - Which products are performing well? - Is mobile or desktop driving more sales? Where is traffic increasing? - How do we identify the “low-hanging fruit” customers? - Where can we reduce costs? But how do you know if your data is accurate? What steps do you need to take to ensure your data is actionable and driving revenue? In our free ebook, 4 Steps to Unlocking Latent Revenue and Driving ROI with Your Address Data?, we show you how to get clean address data, and then how to use that address data to unlock latent revenue and drive ROI.

Certain surprises are fun. Finding out the person in front of you at Starbucks paid for your coffee? Java-tastic! Finding out you've been shipping products to addresses that don't exist? That's a postal catastrophe. Luckily, many shipping snafus can be prevented by using address validation software. Address validation (or verification) is the process of checking a mailing address against an authoritative address database. If the address matches an address in the known database, it is marked “valid”—meaning it's real.

Typos, typoes or typo's? No matter how you spell the word, typos are a problem. Even the most accurate typist occasionally misspells a word, leaves off a letter at the end, or just types a different word than intended. Typos in a text to your friend aren't a big deal. They'll figure out what you mean using context clues. But in a business data scenario, if you're following the logic of traditional address matching, where an address is either an exact match or not a match, you can't account for different formats or misspellings.

We recently released a free ebook, 4 Steps to Unlocking Latent Revenue and Driving ROI with Your Address Data, in which we show you how to use your company’s address data to unlock latent revenue and drive ROI. In our last article, we went over address parsing. Today, we’ll explain address normalization and why this matters for data cleansing and analytics. Address Normalization (or making an address look normal) is the process of formatting an address so that it matches the proper address format of the national postal authority, such as the USPS for those in the United States.

Our global economy comprises many industries—healthcare, financial services, insurance, commercial development, and more. But one thing all companies have in common, no matter the industry? They’re all chasing a bigger and better return on investment (ROI). While there are many drivers of ROI, have you ever considered the role that address validation plays? Clean address data is essential for many business functions. Consider eCommerce, one rapidly growing example. Forecasting shows this retail channel will account for 22 percent of all global retail sales by 2024.

According to Smarty’s latest query of its US address database, there are 905,226 unique street names in the United States. And some of them are, well, entertaining (or disturbing). Check out a panel of Smarty address experts who joke and laugh about some of the funny, weird, Christmas, Halloween, and crazy street names and addresses they’ve encountered in our webinar: Addresses: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Watch the Fun, 30-Minute Webinar Recording Here’s a sneak peek. Funny Street Names How would you like to live at: 3A Hole Spur Alamo GA 30411 Careful how you read that out loud around children, people.

Did you know that every address has loads of hidden data buried in its metadata? In this webinar, we briefly considered the value of breaking an address into its component parts. Then we looked at the different metadata available and provided definitions for each one. And finally, we went over use cases and ideas on how to leverage metadata for improved operations, business intelligence, and financial performance. There’s gold in your address metadata! Every address contains basic components that are standardized by country.

Companies purchase national master address lists to use in many ways for many reasons. Though some might assume the only reason to purchase a national address list is to blanket-mail or ship things to people not already in a company’s database, the lists are extensively used for asset location tracking, resource planning, market intelligence, operations optimization, business strategy, and decision making. Let’s take a closer look at the first non-mailing use case: asset location tracking.