Category: Compliance

Fix Address Quality in your Salesforce data

When it comes to addressing data quality in Salesforce, validation rules are a helpful starting point. They ensure fields like ZIP code, state, and country follow correct formatting, but what happens when the data is formatted correctly, yet still incorrect?

For example, Salesforce can enforce that a U.S. ZIP code follows a 5-digit or 9-digit format (99999 or 99999-9999). But that doesn’t stop a user from entering a completely non-existent ZIP code, or a mismatched city and state.

That’s where RealZips automation steps in.

Format ≠ Accuracy

The Salesforce Validation Rules guide highlights how to enforce correct formatting using functions such as REGEX (regular expression in validation rules and formulas), VLOOKUP (a powerful formula function), and hard-coded lists of country and state codes. These rules ensure structured data entry, which is a critical starting point.

But structure doesn’t equal data accuracy; that is a must for territory assignment, AI processes, and integrations with other applications.

Take these examples:

• A valid-looking ZIP code may not exist.
• A ZIP might be real, but it’s tied to a completely different city or state.
• A two-letter country code could be entered, but it might not align with ISO standards.

These examples may catch and correct formatting issues, but not real-world data accuracy. A ZIP like 99999 might pass validation, but doesn’t exist. Even worse, mismatches like ZIP 85001 + State NY may be saved because both fields look valid, while being completely wrong together.

Without further validation, these inaccuracies can cascade into routing errors, poor segmentation, and broken sales territory logic.

RealZips Solves the Real Problem

RealZips solves this with real-world postal data, not just patterns. Here’s how:

• Looks up postal codes in real-time.
• Confirms whether the ZIP code matches the city, state, and country.
• Blocks or auto-corrects mismatched values.
• Enriches records with city, county, state, region, and territory.

This ensures addresses are right the first time, and is highly useful for automation.

Regex Fails –> RealZips Fixes

Without RealZips: A user types 7097 instead of 07097 for a new lead in Jersey City, New Jersey. The missing leading zero causes Salesforce to accept it as a generic five-digit format. But 7097 isn’t a valid ZIP anywhere, so the system saves a record with no meaningful geographic value. The lead is misrouted, regional reports are thrown off, and manual cleanup is required later.

With RealZips: RealZips instantly flags 7097 as invalid and checks for close matches. It identifies that 07097 is a valid ZIP code in New Jersey, specifically Jersey City. The platform automatically corrects the ZIP, realigns the record with the proper state, and enriches it with city, county, and territory data. The lead is now accurately placed and routed with no manual intervention.

Common ZIP Mistakes (go ahead… check your own data 👀 )

ZIP Code	Similar ZIP Code	Challenge
07001 (Avenel, NJ)	70001 (Metairie, LA)	Same digits, but different state and region.
10001 (New York, NY)	1001 (Agawam, MA)	001 is a valid 4-digit ZIP in MA (used with leading 0 → 01001). Easily confused with 10001 in NYC.
30301 (Atlanta, GA)	33031 (Homestead, FL)	Close visual match when typed or read quickly.
85001 (Phoenix, AZ)	58001 (Arthur, ND)	Same digits, when transposed, represent different states.
19104 (Philadelphia, PA)	19014 (Aston, PA)	Close regional proximity and digit reversal.

3 Ways RealZips Enhances Address Validation

RealZips supercharges Salesforce’s native validation rules by adding a powerful, fully integrated geographic data engine—built natively on the Salesforce platform. Here’s how it transforms address accuracy and automation:

1. Real ZIP Verification ✅

Instead of checking if the ZIP code looks right, RealZips checks if it is right:

• Does the ZIP code exist?
• Is it active and deliverable?
• Does it align with the correct city, state, and country?

All ZIP codes in RealZips are linked to verified metadata: state, city, county, time zone, MSA, CBSA, and more. When users enter a record, RealZips can instantly confirm its accuracy or block it if something is off.

2. Global Accuracy 🌎

RealZips includes ISO-standardized two-letter country codes and validated region or state codes for every supported country, ensuring global address data complies with international standards. This improves system integrations, supports localization efforts, and strengthens compliance.

Beyond simple validation, RealZips automatically enriches records with detailed geographic attributes such as city, county, metro area (MSA), state or province, sales territories, time zones, and more. As a result, every Account, Lead, and Contact becomes geo-complete, enabling seamless automation across Salesforce and connected systems.

3. Automation & Workflow Integration ⚙️

Beyond validation, RealZips can auto-populate fields with standardized geographic info. Use this to:

• Auto-assign leads to territories
• Standardize campaign segmentation
• Ensure compliance with state-based regulatory rules
• Enable AI-powered routing, scoring models, and content generation

Who Benefits?

With RealZips running in the background, every team benefits from cleaner data, smarter automation, and accurate geographic insights built directly into Salesforce. Here are a few examples:

🧑‍💼 Sales Teams

• Instantly understand each lead’s territory, region, and local rep
• Avoid misrouted opportunities and lost deals
• Enable precision lead scoring based on local market potential

📣 Marketing Operations

• Segment campaigns by metro area, climate zone, or demographics
• Suppress invalid or unserviceable ZIPs from campaigns
• Improve campaign ROI by targeting verified regions

🤖 AI Agents

• Use enriched address data to create smarter prompts and summaries
• Generate insights by true territory, not just raw ZIPs
• Deliver compliance-ready, geographically grounded AI outputs

These enhancements occur in the background, 100% integrated into the Salesforce platform, and are designed to make the agent experience faster and more accurate.

Customer Win: Faster Quotes, Fewer Errors

A leading workplace solutions brand faced a persistent bottleneck: sales reps often worked at high speed in Salesforce to create quotes, but mismatched ZIP codes and states caused downstream integration failures with their ERP system. Each failure required manual cleanup, delaying orders, frustrating reps, and wasting valuable operations time.

To solve this, the team implemented a smart “Quote Preflight Check” powered by RealZips. RealZips provided a verified ZIP-to-state mapping layer directly within Salesforce, enabling automatic validation at the moment of quote creation. If a mismatch was detected, sales reps were prompted to correct the entry before the quote ever left Salesforce.

The results were immediate and measurable:

0️⃣ ERP integration errors dropped to zero for sales rep-created quotes.

⏰ Manual data cleanup was virtually eliminated, saving hours per week across Sales Ops and IT.

⭐️ Salesforce data quality dramatically improved, reinforcing trust across CRM and ERP systems.

By enforcing data integrity at the source—without slowing down the sales process—this company turned a recurring integration pain into a non-issue, accelerating quote-to-order workflows and strengthening system-wide reliability.