Using a master address list to improve asset tracking

Companies purchase national master address lists to use in many ways for many reasons.

Though some might assume the only reason to purchase a national address list is to blanket-mail or ship things to people not already in a company’s database, the lists are extensively used for asset location tracking, resource planning, market intelligence, operations optimization, business strategy, and decision-making.

Let’s take a closer look at the first non-mailing use case: asset location tracking.

Asset location tracking

Many companies have physical equipment located throughout their service regions. But tracking assets can get tricky when legitimate alias addresses exist. For example, the following two addresses represent the same location or delivery point:

• 370 7TH AVE, NEW YORK, NY 10001
• 7 PENN PLZ, NEW YORK, NY 10001

By separately entering both addresses in Smarty’s Single Address Verification tool, you’ll see that the second one is “Flagged for LACSLink” which indicates it’s an alias address.

Might a company be confused and double-count their assets - once for each valid address? It happens.

The best master address lists help eliminate asset location and accounting confusion due to duplicate alias addresses because they include a persistent unique identifier, like Smarty’s SmartyKey, which unifies all alias addresses under a single, verified address having a single ID.

For example, the two addresses mentioned above share the same unique identifier, an integer of up to 10 digits. In fact, if the address had 20 aliases or more, all would share the same unique ID.

Because of the unique ID, deduplication, data blending, and accurate asset tracking have become a breeze for even the most massive databases.

More use cases for a master address list

To discover more use cases for a master address list, see What is a National Address Database and How is it Used?

For more information or to get a Sample List, see Smarty’s US Master Address List product page or contact sales.