Posts filed under 'Product Information'
Reverse Phone Lookup: Token-Based Pricing Helps You Keep Your “Pot of Gold”
What do St. Patrick’s Day and a reverse phone lookup service have in common?
If the reverse phone lookup service is GeoPhone Plus from Service Objects, the answer is: a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 
An advanced reverse phone lookup service, like GeoPhone Plus, gives you the ability to identify detailed contact information for landlines, VOIP, wireless and toll-free numbers for both residences and businesses – all from a supplied phone number.
This is a great solution but where GeoPhone also excels is its pricing model.
In standard pricing models, you would pay the same “per transaction” fee for each reverse phone lookup attempt, regardless of whether or not detailed contact data exists for that phone number. But all phone numbers and the data available are not created equally. With “token-based” pricing, you pay only when a successful match is made for the phone number. The amount of tokens charged per transaction depends on the level of detail and the quality of contact data available for that phone number.
For example:
A major grocery retailer is using GeoPhone Plus to perform reverse phone lookup on phone numbers provided by their customers. They use the detailed contact data (name, address, etc) to have a better idea of where their customers are coming from to help make decisions about targeted marketing efforts and potential locations for future stores. Each time their software service requests information on a specific phone number, GeoPhone Plus hits multiple data sources to find detailed contact information for that phone number. GeoPhone Plus returns contact information on all types of phone numbers such as landlines, VOIP, wireless and toll-free. The type and level of contact data available varies depending on the type of phone number.
In standard pricing models, you would pay the same “per transaction” fee for each reverse phone lookup attempt, regardless of whether or not detailed contact data exists for that phone number. But all phone numbers and the data available are not created equally. With “token-based” pricing, you pay only when a successful match is made for the phone number. The amount of tokens charged per transaction depends on the level of detail and the quality of contact data available for that phone number.
Contact us for more information on GeoPhone Plus and token-based pricing.
Add comment March 17, 2010
Why Google Maps Isn’t a Good Substitute for Address Validation
What is the difference between Address Validation and Google Maps?
Deliverability, deliverability, deliverability. Okay, there are a few others, but that’s the big one. Just because Google Maps places a marker on a map when you input an address, does not mean that you can deliver mail there, nor that a property even exists at that marker.
Take the following “address”:
4130 Calle Real
Santa Barbara, CA 93110
As you can see, Google Maps says this is a valid address and puts its marker next to an empty field with no buildings. As you’d expect this is not a deliverable address and will be returned to sender.
The reason for this discrepancy is that Google Maps is not an Address Validator, it is a Geolocation Estimator that uses addresses to aid in its estimation.
Imagine two people each holding a ruler with the numbers 1 – 12 printed on it. One of them is blind-folded. If they were asked to point to the number “6″, how would each one go about it?
The one who could see all the numbers would just find the 6 and point to it. The one who was blind-folded would probably guess that 6 was printed right in the middle of the ruler and point there.
But what if the ruler was missing the number “6″? Well, the person who could see all the numbers would state that the number was invalid, and the blindfolded person would point to an empty space in the middle of the ruler.
Google is blindfolded. They know street names, and the numbers on the endpoints, but very little about the numbers in-between. Often they assume a continuous and evenly-spaced number line and point to where they’d guess your number is.
Admittedly, this is an extreme example. But what it demonstrates primarily is that Google Maps does not have a strong knowledge of valid primary numbers within street segments and therefore cannot be used to determine deliverability of an address. The only thing that can reliably determine deliverability is a CASS-Certified Address Validation Engine that can match an address against the USPS database of valid addresses.
Posted: by Donnie K.
1 comment March 3, 2010
LeadsCon 2010… Its all about Quality Leads
I am out in Las Vegas attending LeadsCon 2010. THE Lead Generation Conference. After day one, the event is off to a great start. What I have noticed is that throughout the sessions, a recurring theme is Quality.
Quality Data. Quality Leads. Quality relationships between lead buyers and lead sellers.
I couldn’t agree more. The internet is rife with bad data and bad leads. And passing off this bad data as a “lead” is one of the key reasons for friction between Lead Buyers and Lead Sellers. So what is the answer?
“Keeping honest people–honest.” Contact validation is a critical component in this process. Whether you are a lead buyer or a lead seller, contact validation can help ensure the validity and contactability of a lead. By looking at a variety of data points for each contact, Lead Validation will help determine whether or not a lead should be accepted, rejected or reviewed.
The skinny on the benefits:
Lead Sellers- Improve your standings with buyers by increasing your percentage of valid/actionable leads. Demand higher price point per lead.
Lead Buyers- Only buy the leads that are the highest quality and likelihood of contactability.
Visit us on the web to see how our Contact Validation solutions can help you ensure the leads you are buying or selling are really going to drive more business to your bottom line.
Posted by: Gretchen N.
Add comment February 24, 2010
Why Cross Checking is Important When Using a Contact Validation Web Service
I have been working with web services for over 6 years now and have helped many companies both big and small to resolve their frustration with the online world of bogus lead chaos and bad affiliate programs.
With all of the information and services available to help validate your inbound leads you need to make sure that it is doing more than just a simple check for validity. There are a lot of Lead Validation services out there claiming that they are the best, but let’s really ask ourselves, what are they doing that is so unique? How will they really be able to assure you that they are catching your bad leads?
Good Question.
Add comment February 17, 2010
Need to Verify Addresses? 5 Things to Look for in a Service Provider
Nearly every company doing business on the web today can benefit from performing simple validation and verification against the contact forms on their website. Each piece of customer contact data has the potential to hinder a company’s business processes if the information is inaccurate, incomplete or fraudulent. Perhaps the most key–and often most inaccurate–piece of information captured is the postal address.
Research shows that performing validation and verification on addresses can help businesses improve deliverability and shipments, reduce overhead spent following up on bad data, and reduce waste associated with Undeliverable Mail and over-production of direct mail pieces.
A quick search for Address Verification or Address Validation on a search engine like Google™ will yield pages of results for companies offering tools to validate and standardize postal addresses.
So how does a company seeking to improve communication with customers and reduce their direct mail waste, choose the right service provider?
Here are 5 important things to look for in an Address Verification or Address Validation service:
(more…)
Add comment February 10, 2010
What is a Credit Card BIN and How These Six Little Numbers can Protect Your Bottom Line
For businesses and consumers, processing credit card transactions has come a long way. Previously businesses needed two forms of identification, to physically look at the card, review the signature on the back…then lay the card flat on card imprinter, place carbon paper over the card and force the handle from left to right for 3 carbon copies. 
This process was neither good for the business, who had no way to actually verify if the card had funds available on it; nor was it good for the consumer, who now had 3 unsecure copies of their credit card floating around for anyone to use for mail orders or internet orders.
The advent of electronic credit card processing and later the use of Card Verification (CVV) codes have dramatically changed the game and now go a long way to protect both businesses and consumers.
The proliferation of pre-paid credit cards and gift cards, however, has chipped away at some of that protection as far as businesses are concerned. Pre-paid cards are essentially “anonymous” and businesses do not have many options for protecting themselves against the improper use of these cards. This is especially true for businesses who’s “goods” are recurring service fees or incremental fees based on usage that must be billed monthly for example. Because there is no “line of credit”, a pre-paid card holder may have the amount of the fee available for the first authorization, but will not likely have it available for subsequent months.
1 comment February 2, 2010
Lead Validation ROI in Plain English: Save Thousands per Month; Get 5.8 days ROI
A recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that when filling out web forms less than 40% of those surveyed provided accurate phone number and custom information—such as address—all of the time. The reality is most people are reluctant to give up their precious contact information when doing research or filling out requests for information. More often than not, the data is inaccurate, incomplete or fraudulent.
Where does this leave marketers, sales managers and lead generators? It leaves them sifting through mountains of contact data with the hope of isolating the true and valid leads that will bring more revenue to the bottom line. According to the Direct Marketing Association, 93% of marketers cite contact data quality as one of their most important issues.
Implementing a lead validation or verification solution is one way marketers and business managers can improve lead quality in real-time and at the source, and ultimately save money by shifting focus to high scoring leads, fixing questionable leads and discarding downright bad leads. 
Do the Math-
Here is a simple calculation showing where businesses save money by validating their leads:
Let’s say your business generates 100 leads per day or around 3,000 per month. 20% or 600 of those leads turn out to be bogus or bad leads. If your telesales team spends around 5 minutes per call and calls each lead an average of 3 times before qualifying and discarding bad leads, that is 15 minutes per lead. At $23/per hour that’s about $5.75 per lead—or $5.75 wasted on pursuing a lead that was ultimately determined to be bad. Multiply that by the estimated 600 bad leads per month and that’s $3,450 per month wasted telesales resources. Using a service like DOTS Lead Validation℠ will validate leads in real-time, before they arrive at telesales, and costs only about $.22 per lead or around $678/month for 3,000 transactions.
That is a savings of $2,772/month-with an ROI on the use of the Lead Validation solution in about 5.8 days.
In a nutshell, lead validation works by:
Validating whether the contact information is real. Is it a real address? Does 100 Main Street actually exist in the zip code provided?
Verifying that the contact name or business is associated or linked with the address, phone number and even IP Address provided.
Correcting address, city, state, and email elements as needed to make the lead data as complete as possible.
Scoring the lead based on the quality of data. Estimating the quality of data entails not only a check on data correctness as entered but quality as established through a method of proprietary checking and sophisticated cross correlation of supplied data with other data sources. An overall score is provided based on the quality of the pieces of contact information such as name, business name, email, IP address, phone number and street address. Recommending that you Accept, Reject or Review the lead.
Download our case study for more details on how DOTS Lead Validation can save your business money today!
Posted by Gretchen N.
2 comments January 27, 2010
Address Geocoding—a Big Tip for Delivery Businesses
All over the country businesses have popped up to bring quality sit-down restaurant meals into our homes. In the Pacific Northwest, Dinner Delivery Plus is one such business. Serving the Greater Eastside of Seattle area for the past 16 years, Dinner Delivery Plus offers the 400,000+ residents and businesses a variety of national and local restaurants with more than 80 choices. About 4 months ago, Dinner Delivery Plus decided to make some changes to their business model. Using DOTS Address Geocode℠ from Service Objects, they have redefined restaurant delivery in their market.
Delivery services, whether it be for restaurants, flowers, or groceries, often charge customers Delivery Fees on a Zone-based model. Zone-based models typically put the onus on the consumer to figure out how much their delivery charge will be by manually plotting their location on a map in relation to the business they are ordering from. To calculate a delivery fee the customer has to figure out which zone their desired restaurant is in and which zone their home or business is in, then they have to calculate the delivery based on a complicated grid or map. Some restaurant delivery services only offer consumers the option of choosing from restaurants within their specific zone. All in all, not the best customer experience—usually at a higher cost to the consumer.
Dinner Delivery Plus saw the opportunity to do things differently and to redefine their market. Their goal was to offer a better value and more restaurant choices to their customers. By employing distance based delivery pricing instead of Zone-based delivery, customers would pay a delivery fee based on the actual distance from the restaurant they were ordering from to their location.
Here is where address geocoding comes in. Using a real-time address geocoding web service, Dinner Delivery Plus is able to pinpoint the exact location of the customer when they register and input their address into the web form to place a delivery order. The geocoding service validates the address and determines the latitude and longitude coordinates. With this information Dinner Delivery Plus is able to tell the customer the exact delivery charge based on their distance from each of the 80 restaurants. Their website makes recommendations for restaurants that are the closest, but leaves it to the consumer to decide where they want to order from–creating a better customer experience.
Offering better value and a better customer experience drives more loyalty and ultimately more revenue. Address geocoding services can be a game-changer for businesses providing delivery as a service to their customers.
What are you doing in your business that is redefining your market?
Service Objects—the leading provider of real-time contact validation solutions—offers Address Geocoding for both the US and Canada.
Posted by: Gretchen N.
1 comment January 20, 2010
Direct Mail Marketing Isn’t Going Anywhere Yet
While many industry experts are calling 2010 the year that will “kill marketing as we know it”, some feel that we shouldn’t be so quick to write off some of the good ole’ tried and true methods. I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal that further convinced me. The article, “Firms Hold Fast to Snail Mail Marketing” talks about several companies who made a shift away from their direct mail campaigns and found their business suffered direct losses from eliminating this type of communication with their customers and targets.
Direct mail marketing can still prove to be a very effective way to reach customers and prospects. Especially for small businesses with a unique offering who are looking to stand out and continue a dialog with their audience. I think the main issue with Direct Mail though is that it needs to be done smartly, with consideration that people are constantly being bombarded with messages, offers and promotions through other mediums. Direct mail should not equal waste. It should not be a waste of time for the recipient, environmental resources or budget dollars.
Businesses who plan to use Direct Mail as a part of their marketing efforts in 2010 might consider committing to make their campaigns more effective and less wasteful by putting in place “greener mail” initiatives. Each year, the US postal service attempts to deliver billions of pieces of mail that will never reach their intended recipient due to being undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA). Using tools that verify and standardize addresses is a quick and cost effective way to reduce the impact of direct mailings.
Check out our best practices tip sheet “Greener Mail: 6 Tips Simple Tips for More Eco- and Budget Friendly Mailings” for more information.
Posted by: Gretchen N.
Add comment January 13, 2010
Tired of Returns: Santa Claus Resolves to Validate all Addresses in 2010
Every year Mr. Santa Claus faces enormous pressure to deliver billions of presents around the world. He has just one 
night—just one chance to ensure delivery of all the toys to children all over the globe. In recent years Claus has turned to technology to aid him in his annual quest. Said Claus, “While Rudolph’s nose may guide the sleigh, I still need all the help I can get. This year we received a lot of returned packages and gifts – mostly from incomplete or incorrect addresses. While maps and on-board computers lend a hand on the sleigh we just don’t have all the information we need.” Looking for answers and new tools for 2010, Claus began his search for something to help him verify addresses for his deliveries.
Luckily for Claus he found a real-time web service which offers Delivery Point Validation, CASS/USPS Address Standardization, and even RDI (Residential Delivery Indicator) for all the addresses on his “Nice” list. By using DOTS Address Validation by Service Objects, Clause estimates he will increase his delivery efficiencies by 40% and dramatically reduce the number of toys which need to be returned to the North Pole each year. When asked about his new services Claus could barely contain his excitement. Old Saint Nick stated “Now with Service Objects’ web services I will be able to almost guarantee that all the presents will be delivered. Not only will the addresses be validated and entered into my on-board computer in real-time, but the reindeer will know if they will be landing on a residence or business thanks to the new RDI filter.”
The North Pole is now giddy with excitement over the implementation of their Address Validation Web Services. In addition to Santa being more efficient on the big night, his elves will also not have to collect, sort, and re-stock returned toys like they have in the past. Santa added, “My workshop costs are going to go down and I can reinvest that money into developing new toys and hiring more elves. In other words, Christmas came early for me this year. This is one new year’s resolution I know will stick!”
How have you resolved to improve your business efficiencies in 2010?
Posted by: Will E.
4 comments January 6, 2010
