How to use LGL’s Address Verification feature

Did you know that your Little Green Light account comes with a free address verification tool? When you enable our Address Verification feature, powered by Smarty, you’ll be able to standardize all your U.S. addresses, and with one click, correct state abbreviations, add ZIP+4, and put those missing leading zeros back in East Coast ZIP Codes in your LGL account.

How does address verification work?

Smarty provides address verification, or address validation, which is used to determine the deliverability of a specific address. During the address verification process, addresses are cleaned and standardized according to USPS guidelines. Spelling mistakes are corrected, and the standard 5-digit ZIP Code is expanded to the more precise ZIP+4 Code. This process can be used to qualify for discounts from USPS on bulk mailings.

How does the integration with LGL work?

Once you activate address verification in your LGL account, you can get access to the verification tool whenever you are adding or editing a constituent mailing address. You can type the full address with information in each field, and then click the “Verify” button to check its accuracy/validity, or you can just type all the information in the Street field. If you type in an address but leave off the ZIP Code, then the tool will fill in the ZIP Code. Similarly, if you include the ZIP Code but leave off the city and state, it will fill those in. Smarty really is smart, and it does a great job of fixing and completing addresses.

You can also enable automatic updates to your addresses, if desired. With this option enabled, LGL will work its way through all your existing data and update/clean/verify any unambiguous and verifiable addresses.

Image: Example of an address that’s been cleaned up and verified.

Note: Smarty’s’ address verification services will let you know if a specific address is real and deliverable, but it doesn’t confirm who is living at the address. According to Smarty, verifying occupants is difficult to do with a high degree of accuracy, and it is not a part of the service. However, the U.S. Postal Service maintains a list of people who have submitted a change of address form, called the National Change Of Address (NCOA) registry.

To learn how to set up address verification in your LGL account, please see our Knowledge Base article Clean your addresses by using Address Verification in LGL.

Bonus tip: If you choose to use this feature in LGL, you will receive the added benefit of being able to perform radius searches within your account.

Interested in trying Little Green Light? Set up a free 30-day trial account to see how LGL can help you organize all your donors and your fundraising activities in our easy-to-use, affordable, cloud-based system.