When implementing a data cleaning and matching operation, you might have frequently heard of ZIP+4
address verification. But do you know what exactly the postal code is and why ZIP+4 is necessary for
full verification and validation of addresses?
We all know what the postal code is but the technical (or historical) facts behind it are not known to many of us. ZIP is the abbreviation for Zone Development Plan, for instance. This was a scheme introduced by the Department of the Post Office to manage rising amounts of mail by categorizing the U.S. into well-defined areas, making it one of the world's most structured and mature addressing systems. The code has become a tool for organizing and displaying demographic data while also enabling mail to be quickly sorted and dispatched.
The ZIP Code was extended from 5 digits to 9 and then to 11 over 50 years, with each number representing the address location. It was easy to sort emails right down to the postal zone of a particular city or place with only the ZIP code.
ZIP Codes are not just numbers that define a location. They have become social identifiers-providing data on the demographics of a specific region's population. Businesses use zip Codes as significant data structures that give them a visual representation of their audience. Companies make essential marketing decisions using this information, including the closure or opening of stores, the introduction of new goods or services and the pivoting of sales data across regions. ZIP codes are POWERFUL, and as such, it is essential to have VALID and Correct ZIP codes for any enterprise.
It must be checked and tested against a government address database, such as the USPS database to make sense of the raw address data. This verification and validation are performed through data matching where the address data of the entity is first profiled to find errors, cleaned to fix mistakes, and then matched to verify and validate the address against the USPS database.
When the USPS database validates the address data, companies can be sure of the quality and validity of their data, which then allows them to access analytics that they can rely on.
We all know what the postal code is but the technical (or historical) facts behind it are not known to many of us. ZIP is the abbreviation for Zone Development Plan, for instance. This was a scheme introduced by the Department of the Post Office to manage rising amounts of mail by categorizing the U.S. into well-defined areas, making it one of the world's most structured and mature addressing systems. The code has become a tool for organizing and displaying demographic data while also enabling mail to be quickly sorted and dispatched.
The ZIP Code was extended from 5 digits to 9 and then to 11 over 50 years, with each number representing the address location. It was easy to sort emails right down to the postal zone of a particular city or place with only the ZIP code.
ZIP Codes are not just numbers that define a location. They have become social identifiers-providing data on the demographics of a specific region's population. Businesses use zip Codes as significant data structures that give them a visual representation of their audience. Companies make essential marketing decisions using this information, including the closure or opening of stores, the introduction of new goods or services and the pivoting of sales data across regions. ZIP codes are POWERFUL, and as such, it is essential to have VALID and Correct ZIP codes for any enterprise.
It must be checked and tested against a government address database, such as the USPS database to make sense of the raw address data. This verification and validation are performed through data matching where the address data of the entity is first profiled to find errors, cleaned to fix mistakes, and then matched to verify and validate the address against the USPS database.
When the USPS database validates the address data, companies can be sure of the quality and validity of their data, which then allows them to access analytics that they can rely on.