Even as we work our way through 2021, eCommerce continues to maintain momentum, with five million households consistently buying online each month, 1.1 million more than the average in 20201. As businesses undergo the expansive shift to e-commerce, there’s one key takeaway that businesses need to keep in mind: Access to high-quality and mature address data is critical for success.
Failed deliveries are a rising issue that can have negative implications on your business’s brand loyalty, customer experience, and bottom line. Fortunately, location intelligence can provide you with more accurate address insights and data that is necessary for your business operations. In this article, we’ll explore what location intelligence is in greater detail, why it matters for your business, and how these insights can help drive higher performance rates and results for your company.
What is location intelligence?
When it comes to ensuring greater precision with the address information your business has on hand, additional attributes are a must. Location intelligence refers to the information and insights your business can derive from the use and analysis of location data—all of which will greatly increase your chances of deliverability.
Location intelligence primarily relies on access to the right spatial data, which is any form of data that directly or indirectly references a specified geographic area or location, to increase understanding and overcome common data challenges.
Types of location data used in location intelligence include:
- Address metadata
- Geocoordinates
- Household enrichment data
Ultimately, these unique identifiers can help increase the deliverability to consumers’ addresses and gain a competitive advantage in the e-commerce space.
Why an address isn’t always enough
As you add a consumer’s address into your database, you add another identifier that helps complete your customer’s profile. While you may think that you now have access to all the information you need to send mail to this individual and reach them at a physical location, collecting an address often isn’t enough when it comes to ensuring optimal delivery care.
That’s why location intelligence is becoming increasingly important for businesses who want to elevate their data accuracy and maximise their operational efficiencies. Since location intelligence leverages geographic location insights, it’s often more accurate than a mere street address or postcode—both of which can change over time. Linking addresses to geolocational coordinates and unique property identifiers allows businesses to capture accurate deliverable addresses at the point of entry, which is crucial when street addresses fail to provide the precision necessary for accurate location identification.
How location intelligence positively impacts your organisation
As virtual shopping continues to grow, it’s necessary to take action to ensure smooth and efficient deliveries to your customers. While having an address on hand is a great starting point, location intelligence provides a necessary level of accuracy and reassurance that increases the probability of a package ending up in the right place.
With more precise and accurate consumer information, you’ll find it easier to make the right decisions for your business. Several benefits provided by location intelligence include:
1. Improved operational efficiency
Most businesses recognise the direct impact optimised operational efficiencies have on their revenue, profits, and bottom line. To heighten the sense of efficiency within your organisation’s daily operations, it’s crucial to expand your existing customer database to encourage a seamless workflow.
The additional data provided by location intelligence can be used to optimise route planning, ensure maximum possible delivery rates, and improve the identification of customers by location. When you maximise the performance levels of your business by improving order fulfillment and customer identification, it provides a twofold benefit. On one hand, customers remain satisfied because they successfully receive their packages and mail. On the other, employees can focus on their line of work without having to set aside time to chase down lost packages or handle complaints because of this avoidable mishap.
2. Reduce costs
Nearly 1 in 10 orders are not successfully delivered on their first attempt2, which can potentially signify thousands of dollars in lost revenue for your business each year. When an item isn’t delivered on the first attempt, this failure can lead to costs associated with:
- Redelivery
- Return postage
- Replacement products
Ultimately, a lack of insight on the location of consumers can have a considerable impact on a business’s finances, which it why it’s crucial to drive greater insights into your customers’ location. With a more specified view, you can engage more effectively with your customers, increase your ROI, and maximise your productivity. Rather than fixing data quality issues, location intelligence will ensure that you have the tools in place to reduce unnecessary costs from failed deliveries.
3. Increased customer loyalty
If a customer’s item never arrives due to incorrect address information, several negative outcomes will arise. This client is likely to be dissatisfied, lose a sense of loyalty to your business, and tell others about their poor experience—all of which negatively impact your reputability and the positive customer experience you’re trying to promote.
Most business leaders know that delivering a seamless experience to the consumer goes hand in hand with brand loyalty. Not only does location intelligence reduce the amount of effort required to purchase an item from your business, but it always maximises consumers’ chance of successfully receiving said package, too. When you instill the measures necessary to maximise your insights and performance, you’ll find it easier to optimise the digital experience for your customers—an important feature in instilling a sense of loyalty to your brand. You may also want to consider enriching your first party data with detailed address meta data and predictive household data.
How Experian can help
To keep up with today’s fast-paced and digitally facing world, businesses should place data at the heart of their decision-making process. Using the latest address validation and cleansing technology in conjunction with optimised data maturity is the key to driving businesses efficiencies and exceeding customers’ growing expectations.
Experian’s solutions can help maximise delivery rates, optimise customer service, and reduce unnecessary costs—all the while helping companies nail their operational and marketing goals.
1 Australia Post (May 2021) The Delivery Experience Report
2 Cision PR Newswire (March 2021) As eCommerce Thrives, New Loqate Study Reveals the Cost of Failed Deliveries
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