The cost of bad address data, and how to fix it

If you’re an e-commerce retailer, you’ve no doubt experienced a parcel being returned to you because of bad address data.

Failed deliveries are a costly expense for retailers. As the merchant, your options are to refund the delivery charges to the customer, pay additional costs for redelivery, or offer the customer a discount as an apology. Regardless of the option you choose, it will cost you more money than a successful delivery would have.

Consumers are also feeling the effects of failed deliveries. Last year, 62 per cent of online shoppers experienced a late or failed delivery¹ and that’s bad news for the relationship between the merchant and customer.

¹ Loqate GBG. Fixing Failed Deliveries: Improving Data Quality in Retail, 2018.

Before you receive any more of your orders back, let’s take a look at some of the top reasons you should capture clean data and enjoy the advantages of a tidy address database.

Customers move, but don’t update their address

How many addresses have you lived at in your lifetime?

Likely more than one. Do you take the time to update all your online profiles with your new address every time you change it? Probably not.  This can result in customers having incorrect address data associated with their e-commerce profiles. By capturing accurate data at the point of entry, you can ensure you’re mailing to customers at their most recent address. This can be a big cost-saver for your ongoing mailing expenses!

Validating address data is an opportunity to reconnect with customers

Address verification is a great door opener for getting back in touch with some customers that may have fallen by the wayside over the years. By collecting updated or new addresses for your previous or lost customers, you’ll be able to increase your response and engagement rates along the way.

But how do you keep data clean? One of Canada Post’s answers to that question comes in the form of AddressComplete^TM – one of the best ways to capture, maintain, and leverage verified address data throughout your brand’s full digital presence.

Enjoying quality address data with AddressComplete

Let’s take a look at some of the major areas where address verification can help an e-commerce merchant:

• Site Optimization: Address verification software provides the data required to enable location intelligence strategies. Leveraging address verification allows you to improve user experience by optimizing forms for easy data entry, and enables tailored local content based on a user’s address data. All of this contributes to an improved customer experience and is a sure bet to increase conversion rates.
• Checkout Forms: Checkout forms are notorious for high bounce rates. Anyone who’s shopped online knows how irritating it can be to fill out payment and shipping information. Mobile shoppers are especially familiar with the pain of payment processing online. Address verification software can instantly produce address suggestions based on the initial information a user has inputted. This not only reduces the keystrokes required to fill out forms by up to 78 per cent but offers your business the added benefit of reducing user error by 20 per cent.¹
• Fulfilment and delivery: Address verification makes the delivery process smoother. Consistent, clean data reduces failed deliveries and lost packages, improving the relationship you have with your customers, and slashing the costs you pay correcting shipping errors.

See for yourself: Try AddressComplete for free.

For e-commerce merchants, verified addresses are critical to your success. A key tool to ensure you’re set up to capture accurate data from your customers, AddressComplete lets you use that data to provide better service and capture more value.

Sources:
¹ Loqate GBG. Fixing Failed Deliveries: Improving Data Quality in Retail, 2018.