How to achieve smarter identity verification with email contactability
From the perspective of identity verification, contactability is about building a more accurate and holistic picture of customers with risk signals that include email, phone number, mobile device, deliverable address and more.
Contactability, especially as it relates to email, is critical given how central email is to how consumers interact online. Email is a fundamental attribute that underlies every online login, 47% of consumers state that email is an important part of their identity. Which rated higher with consumers than their passports and their DOB.
It’s easy to see why an email address is essential information for consumers and businesses. An email address lets users log in, reset their passwords, and notify them about new products or upgrades. Invalid, fraudulent, or high-risk emails are a significant red flag that the user might not be legitimate, trustworthy, or genuinely interested in your product.
The email verification landscape
Email contactability verification plays an essential part in a business’s fraud prevention strategy. In gaming, operators can better prevent bonus abuse and ensure that only one account is created per valid user. Payment platforms can have another tool to defend against Origination fraud and Account Takeover Fraud (ATO). Enhanced contactability can help at origination with detecting emails from bad domains outside the country, preventing tumbled and spoofed emails. For lenders, email contactability ensures they can collect payments and manage the loan effectively. If borrowers cannot be reached, it may be difficult for the lender to collect payments on time, which can affect the lender’s cash flow and ability to manage risk.
Risk isn’t limited to fraud. Contactability verification can help a business become strategic with who they create trusted lines of communication with. The average financial impact of poor data quality on organizations per year, is estimated to be $9.7M. In eCommerce, contactability is critical in successfully communicating order confirmation, shipping and tracking, and marketing efforts. 68% of businesses claim that failed or late deliveries significantly cost their operations. If businesses can only maintain trust lines of comms to ensure packages are being shipped to the correct address.
With effective contactability, eCommerce businesses should save time and resources on those field deliveries. Pairing email attributes with more smart layers of identity attributes like email address deliverability presents a much more detailed and accurate likeness of an identity. The result is an added layer of intelligence that gives you the ability to more fully assess the quality of an identity, which allows businesses to detect fraud indicators, ensure products and communications will reach customers as planned, and manage return costs.
The lending space can see an impressive benefit from implementing contactability verification. Establishing and maintaining trust lines of communication proves critical to payments/ repayment reminders reaching consumers. Contactability is also fundamental in loan processing and where to send closing documents.
What to look for when establishing email contactability
1. Greater insight into an address
When establishing the contactability of an email address, businesses must analyze multiple email attributes for deeper insights into a transaction. Contactability offers enhanced email verification that can instantly analyze email attributes, such as domain, syntax, verification date and originating country.
2. Informed fraud prevention decisions
With robust contactability verification, businesses can determine if the email is associated with first-party fraud, identity theft, synthetic fraud or ‘card not present’ fraud. When an email is submitted for validation, a truly comprehensive solution can instantly analyze email attributes for patterns indicative of fraud.
3. Seamless escalation of risky emails
A comprehensive check can quickly confirm an email’s authenticity while allowing businesses to seamlessly escalate email addresses based on domain and risk band. Attributes can suggest an email address is associated with known fraud. Alternatively, a domain may come back as legitimate but might be a corporate domain.
Enhanced contactability with email attributes
With a more accurate and holistic picture of their customers, businesses are empowered to onboard only those customers they trust, while better managing resources, improving operational efficiencies and safeguarding their business against fraud. With the right risk attributes, businesses can stop fraud at their digital doorstep while also confirming email contactability.
With contactability verification businesses are empowered also escalate transactions to an additional layer of verification, like a KBA or Scan solution, based on email address risk. Go beyond basic identity matching with real-time email intelligence to validate addresses and assess underlying risks — without compromising the customer experience.
For more information on how to ensure your customers are who they claim to be, talk to a trust expert.