Avoid duplicates when Individual constituent is also an Organization contact

Christina Swiszcz

We have been having an issue with duplicates in our mailings, due to the fact that an individual is a constituent as well as a contact for an organization. If the query is set up to pull past donors/sponsors of an event (ex. golf tournament), and the individual was a golfer and the organization was a sponsor, then both would appear in the output query results because they are separate constituents/donors. We don't want to mail two invitations to the same person, but have not figured out a way to avoid this, other than manually looking over the list. But this has proven time consuming as well as unreliable.

I have thought of creating an attribute that can be pulled out in a query, but haven't figured out what the best and most effective route would be. Also, I don't know if using solicit codes would help here, since we do want to mail to one or the other depending on the type of mailing.

Thanks!

Susan Connors

We created an attribute for Org contacts that we want to invite, etc. The Attribute category is Mailing Lists, the Description is a pull-down list of hierarchy: Appeal/Thank You (highest, always invited); Invite/Info (sometimes invited), Special (rarely invited).  The contacts are also marked in the relationship record with one of these same designations as a contact type.  Pulling only individuals is so much easier to export and manage.  You could create your own hierarchy list, depending on how you want to include them for what mailings/emails, etc.  It has been working well for us for 10+ yrs now.  However, these lists should be reviewed periodically for changes and accuracy.Much luck!

Madeleine Holdsworth

We struggle with this as well.  What we have done which helps somewhat (but not entirely) is to code one or the other as a do not mail.  Generally, if an org contact has an individual record, we will check the "do not send mail" checkbox in the org contact window, and pull the individual record for the mailing (the constituent has the business address as primary).  However, it's only as good as our org contact data, which does need a major cleanup.  We export into Excel and we still have development staff who review the lists before they get sent to our mailing house (we don't really use the mail module in RE because it doesn't give us the options we want).



RE is cumbersome at best in this regard!

Gina Gerhard

I think this might be a solution!  



In Mail, there's this really great 'hidden gem' of a function -- exactly for the situation when you have the same individual on your mailing list as an individual AND as a contact at an organization.  It doesn't really have a name but here's the instructions (if you're patient to go through these steps):

• Go to Mail and create a Quick Letter.
• On tab 6: Org Address, in Step 2 hit the Contact Information button.
  • Here's where you specify which contact types you want to include.
• There's a line of text towards the bottom that says 'If a contact also receives this mailing as an individual' and you have these choices:
  • Mail to individual address only
  • Mail to contact address only
  • Mail to both addresses separately
• So you can specify here how you want to handle these 'duplicate' situations
  • BUT your decision applies to your entire mailing list (you can't pick and choose which ones you want to go one way or another, it's for ALL).
• If Quick Letter doesn't give you enough 'oomph' for your mailing, run your query through Mail with this option selected and then on the 1: General tab, choose to create an output query.
  • Then use this output query in Export to get a more robust mailing out.  But it will have done this 'special processing' for you.

I've found a few issues with this:

• If you choose to mail to both separately and the individual actually has their business address as preferred, you'll generate what essentially are two exact duplicate mailings (because they're both going to the business).
• If you choose to mail to the contact address only, you're probably pulling in the single addressee version (Mr. John Smith).  If you really want to mail to 'Mr. and Mrs. John Smith" then you should probably choose to mail to the individual address and choose the joint salutation.

I've been a very vocal advocate for making this very useful functionality also available in Export, not just in Mail. Please consider supporting this in IdeaBank with your votes:

• Make options for mailing to contacts in Mail also available in Export:  http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/5874230-make-options-for-mailing-to-contacts-in-mail-also

Nicole S

Let me just say thank goodness for Gina!  YES! MAIL!  And why is this so "hidden".  Really.



How to avoid duplicate mailings to contacts and individuals when creating the mailing in Export On the Organization Address tab in step 2, click Contact Information On the Contacts to Receive Mail screen in the If a contact also receives this mailing as an individual drop-down, select Mail to individual address only BB266324

Christina Swiszcz

Gina - What a great find! Thanks so much for pointing out this tip, I have never noticed that drop-down box before. But this is super helpful and should help with what we want to accomplish. 

I totally agree that Export should have more options for exporting contacts. We struggle with this also because there may be several contacts for each organization, but export is limited in how those contacts are exported. We use contact attributes to code what types of mailings each contact will receive. I end up pulling all the contacts, then having to sort through the Excel sheet to determine which is the correct contact to mail to.

Gina Gerhard

Christina - So you've delved into the contact attributes to try to further 'tailor' your contacts.  Does that level of detail give you the ability to correctly pull the exact contacts every time?  Theoretically it should (because you are able to specify to pull contacts with only specific contact attributes) - how about in reality? How is this working for you?

 

Christina Swiszcz

We are able to use it fairly smoothly through Mail. Especially since there may be more than one contact for each attribute, and I can "print one for each contact found". But when pulling a list through Export, it's not as foolproof. You're probably saying "why not just do everything through Mail?" Well, I don't have a good excuse for that. Now that I have your tip though, I will try the entire process in Mail next time we have a mailing and see how it works.

Susan Connors

We use an attribute for contacts that allows me to export from an individual query, so you can use the individual add/sals, etc.  Each contact that we want to mail to has his/her own ind record with a 'Mailing List" attribute.  We have 3 tiers: Appeal/Thank You; Invite/Info; Special.  With all high-level invites, only the 'Appeal/Thank You' tier gets the invite.  We can expand anytime to include the lower 2 tiers.

So my invite queries look for this attribute, then exports the preferred address on the individual record (for many, this is the biz address too).  The only drawback is that this has to be kept up and updated, but otherwise, that doesn't take as long as the shuffling through the spreadsheets trying to line up the name fields from contacts, etc. and removing dupes.  It used to take hours to prep data for invites, but now it's 15 minutes or less because all the exports are based on fields from ind. and not org records, so everything lines up in the exported spreadsheet ready for merging with little to no adjustments.