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Special Reports
Lead Generation
New Program Corrects Address Mistakes in ACT!
RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, CA-Melissa Data, a provider of data quality software and
services here, has just released a new program, Contact Zone for ACT!
Contact Zone, first developed for Microsoft Outlook, checks the validity of addresses
and phone numbers and provides data correction to ACT! records over the Internet.
The new software verifies street addresses, adds ZIP codes, corrects misspellings,
updates area codes, calculates distances, identifies gender and appends geographic information.
ACT! is one of the most popular database programs used by mortgage originators.
Another popular product in this niche is GoldMine, and Melissa Data is developing a version of Contact Zone for
that program.
Raymond Melissa, president of Melissa Data, commented, "Accurate data is
at the heart of today's business success. The fact that up to 40% of address and phone errors occur at the initial
time of entry underscores the need for regular data correction.
"Sending mail or parcels to the wrong address or dialing a bad phone number
is a waste of time and money. Contact Zone makes the sales process more effective.
"With accurate, updated information, sales professionals can work faster
with better results, disqualifying dead ends so they can focus on their best prospects."
Users can save keystrokes because Contact Zone automatically fills in the city
and state when the ZIP code is typed in.
This program can even help reduce possible instances of fraud by identifying doubtful
address and phone number combinations.
There is the option to verify information in a single record when it is entered
into the database or in all contact records at one time by using auto-batch tools.
Contact Zone is powered by Melissa Data's Mailers+4 address verification engine.
This guarantees that records are being verified to meet U.S. Postal Service specifications for accuracy. The program
matches address data against the USPS database of 140 million deliverable addresses.
Technical specifications for Contact Zone include a computer with 64 MB of RAM
(random-access memory) and with 6 MB of space available on its hard drive.
The user sends the information to Melissa Data's Web servers via XML interface.
It is corrected and returned to the same fields on the ACT! screen. ACT! is a product of Best Software, Scottsdale,
Ariz.
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