In 2020, digital marketing is expected to be more significant than ever, thanks to the unstoppable development of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and other technologies.
But this is not to say that traditional techniques like direct mail marketing will go obsolete. In fact, in a world where everything is processed online, people will feel the need to connect with brands on a more physical level. This is direct mail marketing's strongest suit. When done correctly, direct mail campaigns can produce the highest ROI and give you the opportunity to build a lasting relationship with your leads.
To set your campaigns up for success, you need to maximize your marketing performance by ensuring you have the best data quality. Address validation services can help you clean your mailing lists, so you can say goodbye to invalid physical mailing addresses, return to sender problems, and wasted money, time, and resources.
To help you decide which software to use for your direct mail campaigns, here are the top five best postal address verification tools in 2020:
1. Xverify
Known best for its intelligent email verification services, Xverify is an US based company that offers a range of digital marketing solutions to clients. They take pride in providing highly accurate postal address verification.
(Photo : Source: Xverify)
Xverify takes addresses submitted by users and compares them to the USPS registry of addresses. But it is not on the top of this list for no good reason.
Xverify's postal address verification system is highly intuitive and works in real-time, which means that when a minor misspelling is made due to human error, the system will auto-correct the error without interrupting the user.
When integrated into your website, the tool will also shorten your registration or check out process, thanks to its city and state prefill feature. Your customers will only need to give their street address and zip code, and the system will automatically fill in the city and state data. (Tip: you can easily integrate their address validation tool on your own landing page. Use their plug-and-play Javascript, and you can have the system up and running within minutes.)
When integrated into your website, the tool will also shorten your registration or check out process, thanks to its city and state prefill feature. Your customers will only need to give their street address and zip code, and the system will automatically fill in the city and state data. (Tip: you can easily integrate their address validation tool on your own landing page. Use their plug-and-play Javascript, and you can have the system up and running within minutes.)
According to their website, you can test up to five addresses a day with their free address checker. If you need to verify more than that, you will need to set up an account to enjoy more features. Your first 100 verifications are free.
By signing up, you can also unlock their bulk postal mailing address verification, which allows you to upload CSV files to verify addresses in bulk easily. Xverify claims that the turnaround for most bulk address validations is less than one hour, so there's that. They also have a user-friendly dashboard, so navigating their system will be a breeze even for first-time users.
Among its top features are the following: Built-In Auto-Correction, City/State Prefill, Bulk Mailing Address Verification, Website Integration, Accurate Segmenting, Personalization, and Marketing Integration Capabilities.
Pros
Because Xverify is also known as the trusted partner of affiliate marketing companies, it offers the capability to do both real time postal address validation as well as batch / bulk verification simultaneously. This allows users to upload millions of addresses at once, with a 4 million limit for batch uploads. If you are a large business owner, this is the best postal address validation tool to use. Connect to them via FTP, and you are all set.
Another thing that is worth mentioning is its capability to integrate their products into your marketing campaigns. Xverify acknowledges the importance of both online and offline marketing, so they offer a range of products to help you create better-targeted campaigns and boost your sales.
By taking advantage of their intelligent email verification system, you can eliminate hard bounces, reduce complaints, protect against frauds, and increase email deliverability. In marketing, gathering customer data is not enough. You need to make sure that you have high-quality data to gain real leads. To do this, you need to periodically clean your mailing list to weed out toxic, invalid, and nonexistent emails and keep only the ones that yield results.
The same thing happens when you use their address verification software. With a direct mail campaign, you can enjoy accurate segmenting of data, which paves the way for better-targeted campaigns. Once you have identified the postal address as a deliverable, you can append back additional details about your leads, like age, gender, and income.
Using this information, you can segment your leads into groups, so that your business doesn't fall into the background noise of mass advertising. Once you are certain you are sending physical and digital mail to actual persons and have gathered additional data points, you can then send out birthday cards and targeted advertising to reach out to your customers. This doubles your chances of connecting with your user; therefore, doubling your opportunity to gain sales.
Cons
Xverify can validate the authenticity and existence of an address only if it is within the U.S. or Canada. If you want to verify an address outside these locations, you will need to look for another option.
Click here to Register for a FREE Postal Address Verification List Assessment with Xverify Today!
2. Melissa
Melissa is a US-based company that provides global identity verification and data quality solutions to businesses and enterprises. This brand uses multi-sourced global reference data to help you connect more with users, prevent frauds, reduce costs, and improve fulfillment.
(Photo : Source: Melissa)
Pros
Melissa offers a range of products, including Melissa Global Intelligence, Melissa Direct, Melissa Developer, Melissa Informatics, and Melissa Lookups. Under the Lookups category, you can find the Address Checker tool. It has three options and these are Autocomplete, Free Form, and MAK.
Unlike Xverify, Melissa compares user-submitted data to USPS and Canada Post registry of addresses. However, the search is still limited to U.S. and Canadian addresses. You can use their online checker unlimited times for free, but you must manually input the mailing addresses. Clearly, this option is not ideal for bulk verification.
If you want to verify data in bulk, you will need to sign up for their Address Verification API tool. Melissa claims that their API cleans, standardizes, and formats the U.S. and global addresses. You can search in over 246 countries and territories. They also have an Address Autocomplete feature, which suggests a verified address as you type. Like the Lookup tool, this can be tested for free.
Cons
Although the Address Verification API and Address Autocomplete features look promising, they are products that you need to purchase separately.
3. WinPure
WinPure is another US-based company that provides data cleansing and matching solutions to clients. The brand takes pride in helping customers improve their quality of information, increase profitability by providing accurate data, reducing costs by eliminating errors and duplications and providing a clean starting point for ongoing database management. They offer two options for postal address validation: real-time address capture and batch address verification.
(Photo : Source: WinPure)
Like Xverify, their free Address Capture tool allows users to verify up to 5 addresses per IP address per day. Once you start typing a postcode or street address on their website, their smart system will start suggesting mailing address from their database of more than 240 countries.
Pros
WinPure's fuzzy error prevention feature auto-corrects the following human errors such as mispelled words, switched letters, missing words and letters, abbreviations or nicknames, and missing or extra space.
Additionally, you can easily integrate their software into your website, application, or business system. You can either copy and paste a snippet of HTML code into your existing codebase or customize the tool just how you like it to appear on your end.
Cons
WinPure does not guarantee 100% accuracy in postal address validation.
4. Byteplant
BytePlant is a Germany-based privately-held company that primarily offers email security and email management solutions. Established in 2003, the company expanded to provide more software products and services, such as the Address Validator, Address List Verification and Cleaning Software, and Address Validation Online API.
(Photo : Source: BytePlant)
As with other address verifiers, BytePlant offers a free version of their address checker online. If you want to test their bulk verifier, they offer free address list cleaning for the first 100 entries. All you have to do is create an account and they will validate and correct your data for free. However, it is important to note that they do not accept free email addresses like Gmail or Yahoo for the registration.
Pros
Unlike most software, BytePlant offers a money-back guarantee which is valid for the first 30 days. Because their software is made in Germany, they claim that it offers the highest accuracy and maximum performance. They also adhere to the EU GDPR Data Protection standards, so you can have peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and protected.
Cons
BytePlant uses credits and charges per validation. If you want to validate an address within the U.S. or U.S. Territories, you will be charged only one credit. However, for addresses in other locations, you will be charged up to 5 credits per entry.
5. SmartyStreets
SmartyStreets is a Utah-based software services company providing address validation and geocoding services to clients. Unlike other entries on this list, this one does not offer other marketing integration capabilities. But like the rest, they offer three options for address validation: single address, lists, and APIs.
(Photo : Source: SmartyStreet)
Among its bankable features are: converts entries into proper USPS format, allows an easy copy/paste process, presents 45 metadata points for each entry, returns geolocation for each valid address, and offers reliable customer support.
Pros
SmartyStreets claims that their address verification is "ridiculously fast and powerful." According to their website, their service averages sub-30 millisecond response time over the net, thanks to their self-hosted onsite solution.
What's more, when you sign up for a free plan, you can enjoy up to 250 lookups for free every month, which works well for small businesses, freelancers, or startup companies. They also claim 100% up-time, which means you can run the system any time of any day without interruption and seek customer support from as needed.
Cons
If you need email verification for your marketing strategies, you will have to use another software or service provider. Also, while they claim that they can validate "every address on the planet," there is no accuracy guarantee written anywhere on their website.
Conclusion
Each postal address verification software has bankable features, but some are, without a doubt, better than the others. To conclude this post, here's the final verdict: use Xverify for 100% accuracy and affiliate marketing needs, Melissa if you need their other software products, WinPure for easy website, app, or system integration, BytePlant if you are still comparing software and want the money-back guarantee, and SmartyStreets if you are a freelancer or startup business owner who can benefit from the free 250 lookups per month.
