Address Updates Issue

Amber Chilson

We have quite a number of folks who call or send us updated address information personally. The issue we are running into is that I change those and then if we run address finder or an NCOA scrub that hasn't been updated then the addresses we've changed are reverting back to an old one. Is there a way around this? It's so frustrating.

Dariel Dixon 2

This is a very frustrating problem. The easiest thing to do would be to add an attribute or something that can be queried to the records when you change them, and then run the address finder or NCOA to exclude those records from the append. It might take a second or two more, but it will save some frustrations later on.

Jenny Marquardt

You can exclude specific records from running in the query you have built.

Aldera Chisholm 2

We have a query on “Preferred Address Date Last Changed” - I get your frustration, absolutely. We see a lot of bad data coming out of NCOA so I always end up doing some exclusions before we import the new data.

Faith Murray

You can pull the query filter based on “Address date last changed”. I am not sure if address updater in NXT allows you the same flexibilities as Address updater in database view.

Ha To

You can add date to the “Valid Date From” for the preferred address and pull out a RE query to exclude the most up-to-date addresses.

Jeannie Goings

We do what Dariel Dixon recommends. For the source we enter constituent and we capture date from. The exclusion is by source and date. Good luck.

Valerie Van Selous 2

Thank you for this question. I was curious about the best practice for what to do with returned mail? Do people delete the old address or just mark the record invalid address, but leave the old address?

Austen Brown

Hi @Valerie Van Selous - I recommend you keep the old address listed in the record, and uncheck the box for “send mail” and change the type to “Previous/Former Address”. This data is particularly useful when confirming duplicates.

JoAnn Strommen

Yes, @Valerie Van Selous, ditto what Austen said. Always good to have to know what address you have that is not valid when someone provides you the same address.

I carry it one step farther with an address attribute of NCOA return and description table entries that match the info on the yellow USPS tags. At times it has been helpful to know they moved, left no forwarding, address not valid, etc.

JoAnn Strommen

I have also found knowing past address very helpful when looking for someone in online searches.