Undelivered mail wastes $20 billion annually in the U.S., costing businesses $5 per undelivered item. Address verification solves this by ensuring accurate, up-to-date mailing addresses, cutting waste, and improving delivery rates by 62%. Here's why it matters:

• Save Money: Reduce printing, postage, and handling costs.

• Improve Communication: Ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction.

• Boost Campaign ROI: Verified addresses lead to fewer returns and higher response rates.

Key Steps to Verify Addresses:

1. Use tools to validate and standardize addresses in real-time.

2. Regularly update address lists (e.g., every 95 days via USPS NCOA).

3. Follow proper formatting (ZIP+4™ codes, abbreviations).

Results: Businesses report saving up to $223,200 annually and achieving $12.57 in sales for every $1 spent on direct mail campaigns. Address verification is a simple way to cut costs, reduce waste, and improve delivery success.

Address Verification: Impact on Deliverability

Why Address Verification Matters

Businesses can lose an average of $5 for every undelivered package, leading to potential annual losses of up to $360,000[2]. These financial risks highlight the importance of implementing address verification.

Save Money with Better Delivery Rates

Using verified addresses can improve delivery success by 62%[2]. This helps cut down on costs related to printing, postage, and handling. Standardizing addresses to USPS® format and adding ZIP+4™ Codes can also speed up mail delivery by one to two days[3], ensuring your marketing materials arrive at the perfect time.

Improve Customer Communication

Accurate address data ensures orders and messages reach the right people, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Maintaining clean and precise data shows professionalism and attention to detail, which helps build trust with your audience.

Boost Returns on Mail Campaigns

When delivery accuracy improves, waste decreases, and response rates go up, leading to better ROI. These gains can transform the efficiency of your direct mail campaigns.

Steps to Verify Addresses

Making sure addresses are correct is key to successful deliveries. Here’s how to include address verification in your mailing process.

Using Verification Tools

Verification tools check addresses against official USPS databases. By integrating these tools into your systems, you can automatically handle tasks like capturing, standardizing, validating, correcting, and preparing addresses for delivery.

Here’s how the process works:

• Capture address details

• Format them to match USPS standards

• Check them against official databases

• Fix any errors automatically

• Produce verified, ready-to-use addresses

"Approximately 20% of addresses entered online contain errors – spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, incorrect postal codes, formatting errors that don't comply with a country's postal regulations. This can result in late or undeliverable shipments, a big and costly concern for companies doing business domestically and across borders." - Melissa [4]

After verifying addresses at entry, it’s crucial to keep them updated to ensure continued accuracy.

Keeping Address Lists Current

Addresses change frequently, so regular updates are necessary. The USPS Move Update rule, for instance, requires address verification within 95 days [6][7].

Following Address Format Rules

Proper formatting is just as important as verification and updates. To ensure accurate delivery, apply validation rules that enforce:

• Standard street abbreviations

• ZIP+4™ codes

• Correct unit designations

• Consistent city and state details

Adhering to these formatting guidelines cuts down on delivery issues, reduces returns, and boosts the effectiveness of your campaigns [1].

Address Verification with BirdseyePost

BirdseyePost's address verification system simplifies direct mail processes and improves delivery accuracy, ensuring your campaigns reach the intended recipients every time.

Automatic Address Checking

BirdseyePost validates addresses through multiple stages to eliminate errors and ensure accuracy:

This thorough process creates a reliable data foundation, setting the stage for more precise audience targeting.

Precise Audience Targeting

Once addresses are verified, BirdseyePost enables highly accurate targeting to boost campaign success. With this system, you can:

• Focus on specific neighborhoods or geographic areas

• Choose from a wide range of demographic and behavioral attributes

• Use personalized maps to highlight nearby businesses

• Build finely tuned audience segments based on validated address data

This approach helps businesses concentrate their direct mail efforts on the best prospects, cutting waste and improving campaign returns.

Campaign Performance Tracking

BirdseyePost also tracks how address verification impacts your campaign, offering insights through key metrics:

The platform's tracking dashboard provides real-time updates on these metrics, helping businesses quickly spot and resolve delivery issues. By analyzing these insights, companies can fine-tune their mailing lists and targeting strategies for even better results.

Address Verification Results

Verified addresses don't just improve mail delivery - they can transform business operations and cut costs.

Small Business Success Story

A three-month review highlighted how address verification turned things around for a struggling e-commerce business. Before verification, the company lost about 200 packages daily due to incorrect addresses. With each undelivered package costing $5 in lost postage, this added up to $1,000 per day - or a staggering $30,000 every month - in wasted shipping costs [2].

Once address verification was implemented, the numbers told a different story:

E-Commerce Campaign Results

E-commerce campaigns have also benefited greatly from address verification. Studies confirm that verified addresses significantly boost delivery success [2].

"When the rate of undeliverables reduces, mailing becomes cost-effective, and the customer experience also improves. Effective address verification unlocks the full potential of direct mailing, achieve return on investment (ROI) goals, and build a strong connection with the target audience."
– Compu-Mail [1]

The impact is clear: businesses using address verification report an average return of $12.57 in sales for every dollar spent on direct marketing [8]. This improvement stems from several key factors:

• Reduced Waste: Fewer undeliverable mailings cut unnecessary costs

• Better Targeting: Reaches the right customers with accurate data

• Improved Response Rates: Proper delivery increases customer engagement

• Cost Efficiency: Maximizes mailing budgets with fewer returns

These outcomes show how address verification not only saves money but also drives better results for direct mail campaigns, creating both immediate and long-term value.

Conclusion

Address verification improves the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns. Research shows that using proper verification systems can cut waste and significantly increase ROI, with businesses seeing an average 40% boost in delivery accuracy [5].

By reducing undeliverable mail, companies save an average of $5 per package [2] and can qualify for postal discounts like ZIP+4™ and USPS® barcode compliance [9].

Address verification also supports broader business goals, including:

• Better Customer Experience: Faster delivery fosters trust and satisfaction.

• Fraud Prevention: Cross-checking addresses with official databases helps block suspicious activities.

• Global Expansion: Standardized international address formats simplify global operations.

• Reduced Waste: Minimizing returned mail helps cut down on unnecessary waste.

Modern tools make these benefits easier to achieve. BirdseyePost's platform integrates address verification with precision targeting and real-time tracking, ensuring direct mail campaigns are more efficient and dependable.