Experian QAS, a customer address verification tool for banks, insurers and government agencies, has added two new services to measure the validity of email addresses and phone numbers. Web-based QAS Email and QAS Phone services work like the standard QAS system in preventing agents and employees from incorrectly entering figures in customer databases by instantly flagging invalid contact data. Experian QAS teamed with a database marketing service and technology firm, TowerData, for the new options.
Here’s how they work: QAS Email compares typed addresses to an internal database of typographical errors, active or dead domain names and “malicious” or duplicate addresses, followed by a algorithmic run-through to make sure it fits with email addressing standards. QAS Phone also works with algorithms to “parse and standardize” numbers against the North American numbering plan, to see if they are in range.
For those who think a wrong address or number isn’t that big a deal, studies show that companies that spend “upwards of 20 percent of operating expenses” on online ads or lead generation partnerships “risk squandering email marketing budgets on bounce reports,” says Leslie Ament, managing partner at Hypatia Research, in a statement. Firms that verify data at the point-of-entry can improve the read rates of email, reduce bounce rates and lessen the potential by getting blocked as spam by domains.
