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. We also share real-world examples of companies that improved business results through address verification. Continue reading for a few highlights, then download the ebook.

3 Common Reasons Your Data Is a Mess

1. Your data isn’t standardized.
2. Customer data elements are separated or duplicated across silos.
3. You have multiple addresses or customer records for the same customer in your database.

Let's dive into how to fix each of these issues.

1. Your data isn't standardized.

United States addresses can contain hundreds of street suffixes or abbreviations, and international addresses are equally messy. You can’t control what variations employees and customers use when entering address data, leading to a database with too many address formats to handle.

The Fix: Using address validation software like Smarty will help you clean your addresses, put them into a standard format, eliminate duplicates, and fill in holes like missing cities, street names, or ZIP Codes..

2. Customer data elements are separated or duplicated across data silos.

Your different business units might be collecting invoices in one system, event attendance in another, and sales history in a third, preventing a comprehensive view of that data. You can’t make good sales or marketing decisions off an inconsistent or fragmented picture.

The Fix: Address data consolidation can turn your organization's data into a single, authoritative dataset. Start by taking data from multiple source files, cleaning and verifying it by removing errors, and storing it in one integrated location.

3. You have multiple addresses or records for the same customer in your database.

Duplicate address data is like a bad penny—it always shows up! The fault could be human error or customers providing varying information at different times.

Duplicate customer records hinder a clear understanding of where your customers are and how you interact with them. They also lead to inflated, unbalanced demographic info.

The Fix: Database cleansing and merging will help you identify and remove duplicates. To begin with, you can take steps to prevent duplicates from finding their way into your database. Using a unique address identifier, like SmartyKey™, is one of those steps.

Quick Tip! Periodically reevaluate processes and incorporate quality checks at each stage to ensure your data management strategy meets your business needs.

Database Cleansing in the Real World

How Address Verification Provides Clean Lists for Accurate Public Noticing Many states have public noticing laws that require notices to be sent to all residents and businesses within a certain radius if development activity will impact them. Bad address data makes it difficult to comply with the law and send those notices.

Our client Express Mapping uses Smarty US Address Verification to clean and validate client-provided address lists, ensuring addresses are deliverable and contain accurate secondary address data, like apartment numbers.

Correct secondary address data is essential to reach all the residents of an apartment building or all the businesses in an office plaza. With Smarty, Express Mapping validates address lists faster and reduces the costs of undelivered mail for their clients. Read the public noticing case study here.

Database Cleansing Benefits for Marketing and Sales Departments

We've covered three common reasons your data might be incomplete or incorrect, and how to fix those with address verification.

But WHY should you go to the effort of database cleansing?

As we shared in the case study excerpt above, our client increased their efficiency and reduced costs for their clients by validating address data with Smarty.

Some additional benefits include:

• You’ll prevent duplicate mailings to the same house, which look unprofessional and waste your direct mail budget.
• Working off incorrect data can result in missed customer touchpoints and lost sales. Clean data helps set your sales team up for success.
• Targeted ads will be more effective based on an accurate list. You can hit a marketing bullseye with a clean database!

Download our ebook, 5 Ways Companies Use Address Verification to Improve Business Results, to learn more about database cleansing. Plus, discover four other address verification uses that deliver impressive ROI.