Multiple Emails on a Donor Record

John Geoffrion

We are noticing a large number of donors with multiple emails of phone type "Email" (as opposed to "Email 1," "Email 2," etc.). Previously, it hadn't occurred to us that this was a possibility. And as it happens, only a tiny handful are flagged "Primary."  Our current DB is the result of a merger of our two predecessor organizations' databases a few years back (before my time here), and my first assumption was that this was the result of the merge, but my examination didn't show any correlation (except in one case, noted below). We use Luminate for web donations and e-Appeals, so this may also be a factor.


- We figured out which email was probably the older one, based on "Date Last Changed"

- We looked at which of the donor's emails were used in recent eblasts (short answer: usually both)

- We pulled a report from Luminate to show the last time a gift was made using that email address. Sometimes the older one was used more recently, sometimes the newer one; in several instances both email addresses were used fairly recently for donations.

- Since when we export lists in RE, we heretofore had only been pulling one email address, I wanted to know which one was pulled and if there was any consistency in which email RE chose. Overall, it was about 50/50, the older email vs the newer one. But when I broke it down by whether the donor had a merge history on their record, a trend emerged: records with a merge history pulled the older email ~80% of the time, records without a merge history pulled the newer email ~80% of the time.


Ideally, regardless of how this situation came about, it's probably best that we pick one email to be the designated "Primary." I'm basing this determination on which email appears to be their preferred one, based on which email is newest, which one was used in their most recent web gift, etc.


Has anyone else out there have this issue come up? How did you deal with it?


Thanks,

John Geoffrion

Dev Ops & DB Mgr

Humane Rescue Alliance, Washington DC

Bob Wiebe

I find this odd. If I try to add an additional phone number of the same type as an existing one, e.g. add a second "e mail", I cannot save the record.  Are you saying you have instances were there are multiple e mails, of which none are checked as inactive?

John Geoffrion

Bob Wiebe:

I find this odd. If I try to add an additional phone number of the same type as an existing one, e.g. add a second "e mail", I cannot save the record.  Are you saying you have instances were there are multiple e mails, of which none are checked as inactive?

Hi Bob -

We have 1000+ records with multiple emails, none checked preferred or inactive, with the same phone type of "Email". Not sure how this came about; less than half of these records have a merge history, so it would appear it's not all a result of our DB merge a few years back. I would have expected to encounter what you did, some kind of error popup, so it may be happening behind the scenes, i.e. when we interface with Luminate for our web donations. My best guess is that it happens when a donor uses a different email address than what was already on file, and in the interface process, the new email is added to the record but the other email isn't being re-classified as "Email 1"

Aaron Rothberg

Hi John-


I've never experienced your situation on such a large scale with multiple variables, but one option comes to mind. If all you need to do is select a Primary, I would export:


ConsId, ConsImpId, PhoneImpId, PhoneNum, PhoneType, PhoneComments, PhoneDateChanged, DoNotContact, Inactive, IsPrimary


...and if you have it, a field that indicates which records have had a previous merge. That field, in combination with PhoneDateChanged, would help you decide which number should get IsPrimary. Additionally, in the same import you could also create a new Phone Type and move one of the numbers into that Phone Type if that's helpful in organizing your data. Just be sure to create the Phone Type in Config before you attempt the import.


Also, in response to Bob's comment:

     "I find this odd. If I try to add an additional phone number of the same type as an existing one, e.g. add a second "e mail", I cannot save the record."


It's a Business Rule you can set to warn you of a duplicate type and let you enter it or prevent someone from entering it. Your organization has chosen the latter of the two options.