Melissa Cites the Single Customer View as Vital to Customer-Centric Marketing

Melissa Team | 2021, Customer Centricity, Customer Experience, Customer Identities, Customers, Data Enrichment, Deduping, Demographics, KYC, Press Release

Comprehensive customer data powers personalization at scale, eliminating the knowledge gap

Rancho Santa Margarita, CALIF – May 26, 2021 – Melissa, a leading provider of global data quality and address management solutions, today announced strategies for marketers to eliminate the knowledge gap in customer data, enabling personalization at scale. With aggregated data from disparate resources, Melissa’s tools and services resolve customer identity and enhance profiles by connecting to and between marketing channels such as email, social, direct, and in-store options. Marketers gain access to a single view of the customer, allowing clear, comprehensive insight into customer behavior and preferences. 

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Identity: A two-way relationship between businesses and consumers

Melissa UK Team | Biometrics, Customer Identities, Ecommerce, Fraud Prevention

We have come a long way from filling cards with customer details, to outbound cold calling a list of numbers to upsell products (which tends to still happen).

The rise of technology has uplifted the extensive use of digital databases & CRM systems, where many industries utilised this platform for better customer contact, service, and marketing to current and potential customer emails used for engagement efforts.

Of course, as our landscape has become more and more digitalised, we are now seeing an obvious pattern of multiple engagement points businesses have with their customers, collecting an email is now just the tip of an iceberg, when flowing through any checkout process over eCommerce. Your address and date of birth could be considered an entity for promotional use, being able to offer deals on your birthday or yearly events based on your geographical location.

2020 has seen social media networks being a dominate player of data collection, shaping its entity into the way CRM systems are populated today, giving analytics to develop customer profiles based on their behaviour across these social platforms.

Data collection will become even more of common foreground with big retail giants introducing sophisticated methods to everyday shopping experiences, with Amazons GO’s new chain of convenience stores advocating the “No Lines, No Checkout, and No Hassles” approach automatically identifying who you are as you enter, and charges you as you leave, collecting data on the items you purchase.

Fashion outlets with brands like Ralph Lauren using smart mirrors, which becomes a virtual changing room where you can complete full outfits without ever getting undressed. The technology lets you try on dozens of combinations, to see what an item will look like in a different colour, just swipe your hand, which again, collects data based on the items you interacted with for further segmentation.

As the above demonstrates the gap is continuing to close between business and consumer, our current environment proves data to be a valuable source for company retention and further growth.
Adaptation to the digital-driven world will continue, giving data assets even more value, which in tail trends a higher risk of data breaches as most commonly found in fraudulent activity from consumers themselves.

With cybercrime estimated to reach 6 trillion in damages by 2021, we see data breaches not only being a hefty price tag to organisations but also how stolen data can be used which is a big concern; Private credentials, credit card information, account takeovers and having one’s identity sold over the dark web are just a few of the implications. Businesses need to act accordingly to develop what we see as a 360 view on their customers, ideally shaping a two-way relationship between the business and consumer, collecting data but also protecting themselves from potential acts from their very own.

we recommend one or more of the following solutions.

 

Contact data verification: Many organisations bypass the importance of obtaining verified and up to date contact data from their customers, not only does this put them at risk of fraudulent activity but plays a vital role to general CRM maintenance which leads to effective marketing and everyday business operations.

Address, Email, Phone and Name Verification are key components to contact data verification being able to cross check these elements to a specific person and be able to verify the accuracy of information entered into your database, ensuring reliable contact with your customers.

Age verification: With a combination of more age-exclusive eCommerce stores popping up, and consumers becoming more comfortable in making online purchases with little concern, compliance measures and customer due diligence will see a further demand for age verification software.

This solution enables business to;

  • Verify a person’s age at point of purchase or during the customer onboarding process
  • Preventing minors from accessing age restricted content, buying goods and services
  • Adding another point of verified customer data for further segmentation

IP location: Alongside the vast progression of the internet, IP geolocation also known as Geoip can reveal the location of one’s server or IP address to assure that you are dealing with a legitimate entity or real visitors. This is important now days for managing online transactions and avoiding impersonation of a trusted company or individual.

ID & Document Scan Verification: This solution lets organisations capture, verify and store customer ID information by using machine readable zone (MRZ) and optical character recognition to extract key information from a presented ID, it is then compared to the selfie taken by the customer by using AI and facial biometrics to verify that the customer is a real person behind the ID presented.

As more organisations start to take advantage of this solution for a full ‘KYC’ initiative, sectors such as financial services and gambling have particularly surged in implementing this process to onboard customers not only to gain more insight but regulate with customer due diligence and ‘5amld’ compliance measures.

This blog has been produced by Melissa, offering a complete identity solution for any business big or small. For more information on the solutions mentioned visit https://www.melissa.com/uk/identity-verification or contact us to achieve more.

Using Address Verification to Foil the Bad Guys

Melissa Team | Address Check, Address Correction, Address Quality, Address Validation, Address Verification, Customer Identities, Data Quality, Fraud Prevention, Global Address Verification, Global Data Quality, Global ID Verification | , , , , , ,

How an Accounts Payable Company used Data Verification Services to Ward off Transaction Fraud

Fraud prevention relies heavily on how quickly and confidently an organization can determine the customer is who they say they are – a process that’s easier said than done. In fact, 84% of businesses have fallen victim to fraud. Implementing a process to identify your customer is integral to protecting your organization, yet extremely challenging. Imagine trying to take this a step further to verify your customer’s customer. That’s the grueling task that one accounts payable company was up against. The company turned to Melissa’s Global Address Verification for help. Here is their story.

This company offers accounts payable services for other large organizations worldwide. It automates invoice collection, processing, supplier onboarding and global payments – all functions that are highly susceptible to fraud. The company recognized this early on, and determined that financial fraud prevention was a necessity for both itself and its customers.

“We wanted to know ahead of time if any suppliers are giving us invoices with addresses from known fraudsters, or from countries known to be fraud-prone,” the company told us. “We needed a system to validate addresses.”

Faulty Content Information Opens the Fraud Door

Some 20% of addresses entered online contain errors, including spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, incorrect postal codes, and formatting errors that don’t comply with a country’s postal regulations. Verifying international addresses is even tougher, with a multitude of formats and number of fields varying from country to country. Additionally, verifying address data from around the globe means you must have a centralized reference database for hundreds of countries.

It’s easy to see that for billing and paying, faulty address verification is a critical issue in its own right, potentially resulting in mismatched billing addresses and payment mistakes and delays.

But it goes beyond that. Without adequate address verification, the true identity of fraudsters can be hidden, especially when a company is dealing with multiple addresses in unfamiliar formats. A wide variety of countries are identified by the US State Department as being prone to money laundering and tolerant of suspicious transactions. Companies must verify that addresses are not from known criminals, and need to provide extra screening of addresses from geographic areas of concern.

A Proven Authentication Technology

This accounts payable company adopted Melissa’s Global Address Verification service as a solution for these issues. Global Address Verification authenticates and corrects addresses in more than 240 countries in real-time. The service also formats and standardizes the addresses to that of a specific postal authority’s regulations (for example, the U.S. Postal Service) in a mailing label or database storage format.

By leveraging the power of data sets and the internet, companies can identify a suspicious person by linking a name with a variety of other verifying data. This can involve matching names with phone numbers, addresses and emails. If there are mismatches—and in particular if names and addresses are listed on caution lists—red flags are raised and a company can then suspend financial relations with suspicious persons until more information in acquired.

In the real world, our company under discussion avoided a large part of the fraudulent financial activity on behalf of its clients. As for ROI, how can you measure happier customers who don’t experience the problems they might have encountered otherwise? The company tells us that they’re very happy with this extra level of security, and that their customers don’t have to worry about accounts payable issues from ersatz players with shady backgrounds.

Capturing Current & Correct Customer Data – Why is it so Important in E-Commerce?

Melissa Team | Address Correction, Address Standardization, Address Validation, Address Verification, Customer Identities, Data Cleansing, Data Enhancement, Data Enrichment, Demographics, Digital Identity Verification, Ecommerce, eIDV, EIV, Email Verification, Full Contact Authentication, Geocoding, Global Address Verification, Global ID Verification, Global Phone Verification, Identity Resolution, International Address Verification, Personator World

Up Close & Personal – The Four P’s of People Data

Nothing holds more value for ecommerce organizations than accurate people data – name, address, phone, email and demographics. We have outlined four major factors that impact the success of a business and increase customer satisfaction in regards to accurate and complete people data.

1. Protect your organization – By verifying customer identities, you protect yourself against potential fraud.

Fraud costs ecommerce businesses billions of dollars each year and continues to grow as the market does. There were a total of 150 million attacks on ecommerce businesses in the first quarter of 2018 alone. This is an 88% increase from the same period of the year before. The top struggle that businesses face regarding fraud is the need to verify addresses and identities while maintaining a frictionless customer check out. An effective first step is verifying data at point-of-entry by validating name, phone, email and address in real-time as it is entered. By verifying identities before a transaction has taken place, businesses can protect themselves from fraudulent charges and expensive chargebacks.

2. Provide accurate delivery – Accurate and timely delivery has become the new standard in ecommerce.

Although 90% of customers say that they will wait longer in exchange for free shipping, that doesn’t mean they are willing to wait longer than expected for a delivery. One sure way to upset a customer is with an extended delay between the stated date of arrival and the actual date of arrival. A common mistake that leads to delays in shipment is unverified addresses. Misspelled, incorrectly abbreviated, or just plain inaccurate address information causes packages to be returned to the sender or even sent to the wrong residence. Customers are less likely to return to a business after a mishap such as this and it will result in lost money and lost opportunities to reengage the customer.

3. Personalize the customer experience – Better understand customers with better data.

Last year, consumers spent $517.36 billion online with U.S. merchants which accounts for a 15% growth from the year prior. This year, ecommerce is expected to grow even more. With a growing consumer base, the competition to improve websites and enhance customer experience is growing along with it. One way that ecommerce websites can keep up, is with added consumer data. With past shopping details, demographics and complete contact details – marketers and e-tailers can beat the competition with better targeted marketing, promotional campaigns and creative forms of engagement.

4. Prevent bad data from entering your system – and corrupting your customer view.

Bad data costs U.S. businesses $3.1 trillion each year. This figure includes the cost to mitigate, the cost to battle, and the cost to harbor all forms of bad data. Aside from an incredibly uncomfortable dollar amount, perhaps the more harmful damage of bad data is the lost single customer view. Without an accurate view of a customer, e-tailers are blind to their customers’ needs, their forms of engagement and whether their personal information is reliable or updated. This harms the customer experience and business decisions that could potentially be based on incorrect data.

Personator® Provides All Four P’s of People Data

Personator is an all-in-one verification and enrichment solution that addresses all four areas of the customer experience that we have outlined above. Personator’s capabilities include address, phone and email verification, consumer demographic data enrichment, contact records completion, change-of-address processing, and geocoding.

So, what does that mean for a business? One can: Protect from fraud with reliable identity verification upon entry. Provide accurate and timely deliveries with validated and updated address information. Personalize each customer experience with added demographic information and complete contact details. Prevent bad data from entering a system with a stringent wall of security that verifies and enriches information in real-time.

Visit our U.S. Identity Verification page for more information and to schedule a demo. Explore exactly how Personator works through the Developer Portal. Call 1-800-MELISSA to speak with an expert on how Melissa can help you reach your data-driven goals with leading, global data quality solutions.