Preferred Addressee...individual or household?

Julie Hiland · April 2017

I'll prefice this by saying that I've worked in RE for over 15 years, for three different organizations. All of them have put the household (both spouse names) in the Preferred Add/Sal fields and then if a special add/sal was needed for either spouse (ex.one of the spouses is a board member or a physician, for example), it was included in the Additional Add/Sals.

BUT now I work for a healthcare organization, and many of our spouses have their own full constituent records.

My question: What do your orgs use as the Preferred Add/Sal? Household or idividual? If individual (Mr...), do you then have an additional add/sal for the household? (Mr. and Mrs...) I'm thinking we need to make a big switch, but the thought overwhelms me!

Donna Woods · April 2017

We are higher ed so each alumni is treated as an individual. However, we link spouses, partners, etc. and create an Additional Addressee type of Event Invitation, which contains both spouse/partner names (Mr. and Mrs. Harry Smith; Ms. Betty Jones and Mr. Harry Smith, etc.). That Event Invitation is used when we want to address both in any mailing, not just Events.

shani traum · April 2017

Healthcare here!

We use preferred Addressee/Salutation for the individual and then under additional Addressee/Salutation we have "Combined Name" and "Combined Sallutation" to capture that variation.

It's cleaner that way and allows for variations on what we want to pull.

Julie Hiland · April 2017

shani traum:

Healthcare here!

We use preferred Addressee/Salutation for the individual and then under additional Addressee/Salutation we have "Combined Name" and "Combined Sallutation" to capture that variation.

It's cleaner that way and allows for variations on what we want to pull.

That's what I thought. But I honestly don't even know where to begin to make the switch!

JoAnn Strommen · April 2017

Julie, yes it can be a daunting task. After using RE for some time and getting a feel for what add/sal formats we used/might need I did tackle the project.

We now have a default set of 10 that is part of every individual record. Primary add/sal are single formal. Then we have single add/sal informal, joint add/sal formal, joint add/sal informal (used by us 95% of the time), last name,first name single and last name, first names joint (use a lot for reports/lists).

If I remember my process correctly, I think I did an export and imported data back into RE. Being able to see the info exported is nice as some special add/sal formats will be needed for spouses with different last names and maybe for people with nicknames.

Another option is to use global change to add a specific format to all the records in the query. I actually have a global change for each add/sal format for when we have a large import for some reason that doesn't come in with the add/sal info.

It was a bit of a process but I'm so glad I did it. Having the different formats has been really nice. Just be sure to test first with a couple records and have a back up of your database should something go wrong.

Karen Stuhlfeier · April 2017

We put both couple's names in the primary addressee and salutation because that is what we use most of the time. I also have default sets set up for: Individuals, Spouses with the same last name and Spouses who have different last names. Also in the default set is a name tag addressee that includes their class year if they are an alum.

David Ritchie · April 2017

Julie Hiland:

I'll prefice this by saying that I've worked in RE for over 15 years, for three different organizations. All of them have put the household (both spouse names) in the Preferred Add/Sal fields and then if a special add/sal was needed for either spouse (ex.one of the spouses is a board member or a physician, for example), it was included in the Additional Add/Sals.

BUT now I work for a healthcare organization, and many of our spouses have their own full constituent records.

My question: What do your orgs use as the Preferred Add/Sal? Household or idividual? If individual (Mr...), do you then have an additional add/sal for the household? (Mr. and Mrs...) I'm thinking we need to make a big switch, but the thought overwhelms me!

Hi Julie,

I work at a combined University and Healthcare System. Historically, it had been mostly set-up with the couple in primary, and we have continued to run into issues with tracking who was truly the patient for our grateful patient program. Alumni had always been treated as individuals. We have now moved the standard of Primary will always be just the person. We create a Couple Addressee and Salutation that is formatted with the couple. This has provided us with greater flexibility. Agreed, it is daunting with the updates and cleanup work that has been done to get us to the right place.

Cheers,

David

Carolyn Moatz · April 2017

Pre-K-12 School. We use individuals as the primary for couples where just one person has an affiliation with the school (alumni, faculty, staff) and couples for the rest (parents, grandparents, alumni couples, etc.). We have a "Social Addressee" for event invitations so we can invite Mr. and Mrs. John Doe to an event, even if the primary addressee is Mrs. Jane Smith Doe '84. We use primary for most of our mailings.

Tammie Cach Abdu · May 2017

Julie Hiland:

I'll prefice this by saying that I've worked in RE for over 15 years, for three different organizations. All of them have put the household (both spouse names) in the Preferred Add/Sal fields and then if a special add/sal was needed for either spouse (ex.one of the spouses is a board member or a physician, for example), it was included in the Additional Add/Sals.

BUT now I work for a healthcare organization, and many of our spouses have their own full constituent records.

My question: What do your orgs use as the Preferred Add/Sal? Household or idividual? If individual (Mr...), do you then have an additional add/sal for the household? (Mr. and Mrs...) I'm thinking we need to make a big switch, but the thought overwhelms me!

Higher Ed here. The primary addressee is for the record holder, then we have 5 default sets that have single, married same last name, married different last name, primary female same last name, and primary female different last name. This is where we capture all the variations you need depending on if some has a title (Dr) or what have you. Within each set there are 5 different combinations. We just converted back in February and are attempting to update all our records to reflect the added options. Right now we are doing on a one by one bases, but are looking into a Global change.

Elizabeth Johnson · May 2017

Secondary school here. We use the couple in the primary as we wish to be inclusive 99% of the time. I think whatever you plan to use the most is what would make sense for your organization.

Ours is a little strange as our Addressee Salutation tends to be formal - exceptions are communicated by constituents which we reflect with using the editable checkbox. Our salutations tend to be informal, except for grandparents that we tend to treat formally unless they are legacy or have some kind of relationship with the school. We have additional addr/sal for a few things - board, alumni for the rare times we want to reach out only to them, employees, solicitations when they say send everything except appeals to us as a couple. We also have an informal addressee that is used for holiday cards, and formal salutation that would be used if a letter ever came from a board member that didn't have the relationships that we have. This would look odd to most that are familiar with databases. Given that in most canned reports, mail functions, etc we only get the two options for each field, this is what works best for us.

A lot of planning went into it and then the execution was relatively easy. Best of luck in your planning.

Jen Claudy · May 2017

I second Elizabeth's comment about a lot of planning but then fairly simple execution. Consistency is a big help. I have done like JoAnn, a set of Additional Addr/Sals to cover a variety of situations. My last time setting this up, every record ended up with the following:

Alpha Sort: Hernandez, Robert & Hernandez, Wendy 456789 [shows both names, lastname first, and includes constID]

Home Addr: Dr. & Mrs. Robert C. Hernandez

Home Formal Sal: Dr. and Mrs. Hernandez

Home Informal Sal: Bob and Wendy

Business Addr: Dr. Robert C. Hernandez

Business Formal Sal: Dr. Hernandez

Business Informal Sal: Bob

Couple Formal Listing: Robert & Wendy Hernandez

Couple Informal Listing: Bob & Wendy Hernandez

HOH Formal Listing: Robert C. Hernandez

HOH Informal Listing: Bob Hernandez

I've also included, based on the org's needs, Volunteer Addr/Sal (HOH or both names if they both volunteer) and OLX Addr/Sal (matches the email address on the record, if known, and used in OLX messages...mostly small lists for a very custom email message). And then those for Dev Director and CEO for constituents who need personalized salutations.

I like the list of options because when I pull mailing lists, I would use MS Access (although with some planning you could do it via Mail or in Excel) that would look at Address Type and use the appropriate Addr/Sal. I dislike sending mail to Mr. & Mrs. at a business address, or just to Mr. at a home address...unless there is a specific & intentional reason to do so.

I just received a mailing from a former employer, and the Addressee used was "Ms. Claudy" which would have been the Home (and in my case also Business) Formal Salutation. So I'm not sure if that's what they used for the whole mailing, or what. But it certainly caught my attention and looked just a bit odd on the outer envelope.

Jeni Whittington · August 2022

@Julie Hiland
Higher Ed

We use Preferred Addressee or Salutation if only mailing to the alum.

If we are mailing to the household we have:

Joint Formal Addressee - Mr. John A. Doe and Mrs. Jane A. Doe

Joint Formal Salutation - Mr. and Mrs. Doe

Joint Informal Addressee - John and Jane Doe

Joint Informal Salutation - John and Jane

Preferred Addressee...individual or household?

Comments

Categories