Good data hygiene for your contact data is the result of a process—and more important, having people tasked to “own” this process across all stakeholders using this data. Here are some of the common...
“Headless e-commerce” may sound like a term that was invented by marketers who’ve been watching too many episodes of The Walking Dead. In reality, it describes a flexible strategy for separating two...
If you visit this blog regularly, you probably know by now how much contact data quality impacts your marketing efforts. Leads are a very perishable quantity, which are also subject to problems ranging...
In 2017, Service Objects provided access to a free downloadable dataset of all US ZIP Codes and Canadian Postal Codes. The dataset is continually maintained and has been extremely popular since we made it...
We were recently talking with a prospect and they asked if we could show them what our Lead Validation products look like.The answer? It is up to you.That’s the beauty of API-based products like...
Validating, correcting and enriching address data is not a do-it-yourself project for most organizations. Not only does it require access to authoritative data from the USPS and other proprietary sources...
A recent Information Age article paints a challenging picture of how e-commerce fraud is growing as consumers continue to move more of their spending online. U.S. retailers report their online...
This article is an excerpt from our free whitepaper, The ROI of Address Validation, which we invite you to download.Here are some of the benefits of keeping accurate address data in your contact...
Of all the ways that people can make a pain in the neck of themselves, you can add a new one to the list: list bombing, also known as lead bombing, mail bombing, or mail flooding.Anyone who collects...
Address validation services. Address verification services. Two very similar-sounding terms, with identical acronyms but totally different meanings. If your business is involved in selling online, the...
Nature has many systems, including the rivers that feed and drain the major lakes of the world. Both influence each other a great deal, particularly in terms of the effects of things like upstream and...
Your business gets a large order for one of its products, with a delivery address of “123 Main Street, New York, NY 12345.” But there is one problem: 123 Main Street is a large office building with...
The world is suddenly in a very different retail environment than anyone ever expected just a few months ago. The global COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the business model for most retailers, some...
Nearly a century ago, US President Calvin Coolidge – a man of few words – came back from church and was asked what the sermon was about. He replied, “Sin.” Then he was asked what the preacher said...
What are the best leads for your business? Obviously the ones that purchase your products or services. Understanding what makes up these leads requires data, research and market intelligence.Equally...
The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus has dominated the news lately, and it has quickly had a major and disruptive impact on life and business around the world. As this illness has spread, cities...
Did you know that in 2014, there were almost 64 million vehicles recalled due to safety issues? According to NHTSA, the number of vehicles recalled in 2014 exceeded the past three years combined. To add to...
Service Objects currently offers a total of 25 data quality products, ranging from contact data validation to detailed sales and use tax calculation. But our roots began in 2001 with address validation,...
Most people are familiar with the concept of sales tax: you purchase something in your home state, or from a merchant who has what is known as “nexus” (a business presence) in your state, and you pay a...
According to Investopedia, business logic is defined as “the custom rules or algorithms that handle the exchange of information between a database and user interface.”In the world of data quality,...
If you are familiar with Service Objects as a company, you probably know that one of our core values is protecting the environment. It was the reason our company was founded in 2001, and remains at the...
Your contact data is the lifeblood of your business. Today, having accurate address data is more critical than ever—it affects your customer reputation, mailing and shipping costs, the efficacies of your...
We love educating our clients. And we did quite a bit of it in 2019, with over 100 blog posts. Our blog, featuring informative articles and detailed user tips, is one of the most popular features of the...
When you gather contact data for leads and customers, some items are obvious: name, mailing address, and email to name a few. But in some cases, it makes sense to check another data point: their IP...
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an address as “directions for delivery on the outside of an object (such as a letter or package).” But when is an address not really an address?The answer is...
In the earliest days of the telephone, there was no such thing as a phone number: you simply purchased a separate phone and connection line to call each person you wanted to speak with. Later in the 19th...
Halloween – which has its roots as an Irish celebration honoring the dead – is a night nowadays where children (and more than a few adults) dress in ghoulish costumes to scare people and get candy from...
As I write this article, it is now just over a month before the holiday shopping period that runs from Black Friday and Cyber Monday through the end of the year – a period that, for many retail and...
Contact records are one of your most valuable assets. According to Salesforce.com, 70% of your contact records will change in one way or another each year. Making sure that they are accurate and up-to date...
The roots of the term “compliance” were first used in the early 1600s when, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, complying meant being ceremonially courteous. Today, it involves much more than...
What can phone validation tools do for you? If you do any telephone or SMS-based marketing or customer contact, they can do plenty, including:Open up more valid telephone leads Protect your...
How big of a problem are bad leads? According to recent figures from various sources, bad data costs American businesses over $3 trillion dollars per year, and over 10% of revenues for many of them. But...
Every year, over 40 million people in the United States move and change their addresses with the US Postal Service. Keeping your contact data assets up-to-date with these changes can lead to substantial...
We all know that paying attention to email security can protect sensitive information from prying eyes. But if you do email marketing, did you know that it can also improve your open and response rates as...
Once upon a time, mail was delivered to residences, workplaces, or a Post Office (PO) box that are provided by the United States Postal Service. More recently, there is also a third option: private mail...
The United States Postal Service (USPS) has an acronym for almost everything and this leads to some pretty interesting conversations around the Service Objects' water cooler. You might overhear our...
A little bit of summertime fun with the Bard and data quality."What’s in a NAPE? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” -William Shakespeare, Romeo and JulietOK,...
Data quality is very important. But that doesn’t always mean it is clear to everyone. In this blog article, I’d like to offer some strategies for discussing it with all the less-technical people in...
Pricing is - by far - the most common question asked when we start talking with prospective customers. And of course, we understand that you need to know the costs as part of your decision-making process....
A phone number is more than just a way to contact someone: with the proper tools, it can be a gateway to a rich set of information that can power your marketing, customer service, fraud prevention, or...
Recently, we published a blog article discussing the growth of the “API Economy”: a term coined to describe the proliferation of API-based tools being incorporated into many software products and...
Blacklisting is the email equivalent of being put on Santa’s naughty list. Except the consequences can be much worse than not getting presents: it can keep your business’ emails from getting through to...
Many people don’t realize that when you send an email, its contents are often unencrypted – and in turn, vulnerable to being seen and intercepted by others. This may be fine if you are sending recipes...
Some terms sound similar but aren’t actually interchangeable – like sympathy versus empathy or good versus well. In the data quality business, two similar phrases with totally separate meanings are...
We have many mission-critical applications for our products. But every year in May, one of the most critical ones is keeping moms happy on Mother’s Day. After all, customer satisfaction is important in...
You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers! This is the first in a series of articles exploring common user questions about our products and how they can be used in business use cases, based on what...
If you sell products and services across state lines, are you liable for collecting sales taxes? The answer is more complicated than you think nowadays – and it rhymes with “Lexus.”The concept of...
Addresses in the United States used to be a simple matter of a street location, a city and state, and perhaps a city-specific postal zone. But by the 1960s, between massive increases in mail volume and the...
When Jimmy Buffett sang the title of this blog post years ago, he may not have realized that he was talking about things like geocoding and data mining. But in point of fact, he was. In this post I would...
The 2010s have been the decade of the fill-in-the-blank economy: for example, the gig economy (where people are increasingly contractors instead of employees), the sharing economy (where Uber and AirBnB...
It isn’t often that our data validation industry makes it into the mainstream media. But this week, it was rocked by a story in Wired Magazine, where two security researchers discovered that the email...
Your business is measuring how many leads you generate with your marketing efforts. You’re even scoring your leads’ likelihood to buy with a marketing automation tool or CRM. But can your marketing and...
If you are involved in e-commerce, you probably know the importance of credit card validation. And if you work with Service Objects, you may have at least a passing familiarity with our DOTS BIN Validation...
A quick Google search will turn up lists of the worst jobs in the United States, ranging from simply gross (like tasting pet food) to the most dangerous (logging, according to the Bureau of Labor...
Customer Service Excellence is one of Service Objects’ core values, which we support in a number of ways, including creating a variety of technical content. Our engineers regularly contribute to our blog...
The four-day Thanksgiving weekend is traditionally the start of the holiday shopping season, with Black Friday sales bolstering bottom lines and consumer spirits. Retailers, online and off, are expected to...
How do you know if an email address is valid? There is more than one way to find out. In this article, we will show you how something we do – known as “ping testing” – makes these results much more...
The holidays are fast approaching. Soon you’ll be celebrating the season and sending holiday gift baskets and cards to people you have enjoyed working with this year. So here at Service Objects, we’ve...
We have spoken often on these pages about the importance of validating your contact data, to make sure you have a valid address and a quality lead. Whether it is a mistyped ZIP code, a lead pretending to...
Most ecommerce merchants learn the hard way; orders and registrations from fraudulent sources cause financial, merchandise, and time losses. With the rise of mobile ecommerce and the proliferation of...
Most people think that they mail or ship things to addresses – and they would be wrong. And the reasons for this might be very important to your bottom line.First, let’s look at one actual address...
Labor Day is much more than the traditional end of summer in America: it pays tribute to the efforts of working people. It dates back well over a century, with one labor leader in the 1800s describing it...
If you live in the United States, you probably think that Independence Day is synonymous with the fourth of July. In reality, Independence Day holidays are celebrated around the world, commemorating...
Some things are just better together. Like milk and cookies. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or, if you do online sales and marketing, ecommerce platforms and data validation services.Integrating live,...
Knowing the geographical location of contact data records is crucial for compliance with the over 100 different Data Protection laws currently in force around the globe. While Europe’s General Data...
Just ahead of Earth Day and Arbor Day, Service Objects has joined forces with One Tree Planted, pledging to plant ten trees for each new customer as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to corporate...
If you do business with clients in the European Union, you have probably heard of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that takes effect in Spring 2018. This new EU regulation ushers in strict...
Once upon a time, life was simple. There was marketing, and there was IT. The former did creative work to drive the product creation and sales process, and the latter kept the computers, software and...
Do you have any friends named “info” or “customerservice”?If you do, our sympathies, because their parents were probably way over-invested in their careers. But in all likelihood, you probably...
If you were to make a list of the things people love to do, data cleanup would usually rank pretty low on the list. (Except for us here at Service Objects. We rather enjoy data cleanup. But then again,...
By the time October rolls around, the top Major League baseball teams in the country are locked in combat, in the playoffs and then the World Series. And as teams take the field and managers sit in the...
If you market to or serve people by mail, there are two acronyms you should get to know: CASS and DPV. Here is a quick summary of both of them:CASS stands for the Coding Accuracy Support System™....
All right, we are finally going to admit it: there are some bad mailing addresses out there that even Service Objects can’t fix.Of course, we’re talking about cases like illegible handwriting,...
A famous beer commercial had people debating whether it tasted great or was less filling. A similar debate is brewing among data quality professionals: do you validate your contact data when you first add...
Dating experts will tell you that people have more problems committing than ever before. And nowhere is this more evident than in your online shopping cart. According to Barriliance, a vendor of online...
Birds and data have one thing in common: migration is one of the biggest dangers they face. In the case of our feathered friends, their annual migration subjects them to risks ranging from exhaustion to...
Online commerce is huge nowadays – to the tune of over $400 billion dollars a year in the United States alone in 2017, at a growth rate up to three times that of retail in general. Barriers to entry are...
April 22 marks the annual celebration of Earth Day, a day of environmental awareness that is now approaching its first half century. Founded by US Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 as a nationwide teach-in on...
Our professions don’t exempt us from real life. Doctors get sick, contractors have leaky roofs – and people who work at Service Objects receive misaddressed mail, just like the rest of us. But one...
There are two unavoidable consequences in life: death and taxes. And taxes are far and away the complex of the two, particularly if you are in ecommerce or a business making sales to others. Here are some...
Getting Your Mail Delivered In 2014, the United States Postal Service reported that 4.3% of all mail was ‘Undeliverable as Addressed’ (UAA). At first glance, this doesn’t seem too bad, BUT this...
As a marketer, one of your jobs is to ensure that your sales team has access to high-quality leads. So how do you go about screening your lead lists for accuracy? Believe it or not, most marketers are...
Lead scoring is a powerful sales feature offered in just about every marketing automation platform. Companies with a solid lead scoring methodology in place are better equipped to not only evaluate VOLUMES...
Savvy marketers know just how important it is to capitalize on every customer lead. And as technology advances and our customer lists expand, so does the need to streamline our marketing campaigns and...
The lead score simplified As it stands, you are the one who decides what and how your lead scores are determined, most likely through rules you set up in your marketing automation platform. Your main...
You found a Magikarp in your neighbor's swimming pool or met a few new friends collecting Pokémon characters at the local duck pond. It's all good fun until......Until you realize that your location,...
Marketing Automation and Your Contact Records: A Five Part Series That Every Marketer Can’t Miss (Part 5) Putting Your Contact Records to the Test! Now that you’ve read our series on how the quality...
Marketing automation and your contact records: A five part series that every marketer can’t miss (part 4) “Well-integrated and accurate customer data is one of the best assets marketers have at their...
Marketing automation and your contact records: A five part series that every marketer can’t miss (part 3) Welcome back! The fact that you’re interested in improving the data quality within your...
One benefit or problem, depending on your inclinations, of being in the marketing business is that you become acutely aware of the marketing that goes on around you. In many ways, that awareness is a great...
Marketing Automation and Your Contact Records: A Five Part Series That Every Marketer Can’t Miss (Part 2) Data integrity is beyond a doubt “the” cornerstone of your marketing campaigns. Think...
Marketing automation and your contact records: A five part series that every marketer can’t miss (part 1) Are you keeping up with the competition? If yes, then you’re likely using one of these...
A Quora discussion recently got us thinking about the status of email in our day and age. As a company, we know how important email is, since we verify hundreds of thousands of emails a day. It's clearly...
We talk a great deal about data quality, validating information, and the impact on our business. Do we ever stop and think where bad data comes from? It’s not like there is some bad part of town where...
Dish Network Corp., a company with a market capitalization of about $22 billion as of last month, could be fined $24 billion for making illegal telemarketing calls in violation of the Telephone Consumer...
Inbound marketing and marketing automation platforms promise to make your marketing more effective, and they have the potential to live up to that promise. However, reality often tells a different story --...
If you aren’t already familiar with “Voice over IP” telephone services, or VoIP for short, you should be. It has become a popular and inexpensive form of telephony – and also one of the most common...
According to a 2015 report from eMarketer, research conducted by Econsultancy found that 79% of global agencies indicated that email marketing was rated effective by more agency marketers than any other...
Are you moving to a new customer relationship management (CRM) solution? While you've likely included various IT costs and end-user training in your migration budget, have you considered cleaning your...
The real estate industry can gain a competitive edge with data validation Data-based marketing, outreach and lead generation isn’t only for cutting-edge B2B companies anymore. Data runs the world these...
