Overview
One of the most important aspects of your logistics flow, is to ensure that orders are shipped out to addresses that your carrier can physically deliver to. If an address has a problem or isn't even allowed to be delivered to, the carrier will return the package and your account will be charged a steep carrier fee.
Address Rules work to prevent such circumstances by allowing Address Guard to prompt the customer when a particular address type is detected. The customer can then update their address to a valid one for delivery.
The other aspect of Address Rules, is to allow your brand to customize the messaging for common deliverability issues.
Get Started
Today, there are 15 address rules which include both common deliverability and custom messaging related based on the type of address being detected.
To access your address rules go to: Rules & Tags > Address Rules
Address Rule Options
The following list is the current available options with a definition for each one.
PO Boxes - If your business does not ship orders to PO Boxes, enable this rule. It’s also recommended to enable this rule if you ship via UPS or FedEx as they do not deliver to these types of addresses.
Highway Contract Route - If your business does not ship to addresses indicated as a highway contract route, enable this rule.
Rural Route - This is an older system of mail delivery which is still used in some parts of the United States. Enable this option if you cannot ship to Rural Route addresses.
Private Mailboxes (PMB) - If your business does not ship orders to private mailboxes, enable this rule.
Missing House Number - When an address is identified as having a missing house number, this address rule text is shown. If this rule is not enabled, our system will still detect the issue and display our standard text.
House Number Invalid - When an address is identified as having an invalid house number (ex: 352 entered when correct value is 3), this address rule text is shown. If this rule is not enabled, our system will still detect the issue and display our standard text.
Missing Street Name - When an address is identified as missing the full street name, this address rule text is shown. If this rule is not enabled, our system will still detect the issue and display our standard text.
Missing Apt # or Suite # - When an address is identified as a building type that requires a secondary address line (ex: Apt # or Suite #) and it’s missing, then this address rule text is displayed.
Extra Long Addresses - This rule is helpful if your 3PL has a strict character limit for the address line fields. You can adjust the character limit count once enabled. For example, if your 3PL has a requirement that Address Line1 must be 35 characters or lower, you can select this option. The rule will then display if the Address contains 36 characters or more.
US Military Addresses - If you cannot ship to US military addresses, enable this rule.
Non-Contiguous US States - If you cannot ship to Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico, enable this rule.
Emojis - A customer may accidentally add an emoji to the address field when ordering on a mobile device. If an emoji is identified, this rule text will display.
Non-Latin characters - If your 3PL cannot process non-Latin characters, then enable this rule. There’s also an option to allow accent type characters like à, è, or ö. If you routinely ship to EU addresses do not enable this rule.
Australia Suburb & Post Code mismatch - This option will prevent the customer from completing checkout (Before Checkout only) if their entered Suburb and Post code do not match. If you're using After Checkout validation, then this message will prompt the customer to make an update.