Best Practices for Email Only Records

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Rachel Smith 2
Rachel Smith 2 ✭
Ninth Anniversary First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
We moved our Constant Contact lists over to NXT earlier this year, and I'm still grappling with the best way to enter & code records with very limited information (email only, first name & email, etc).  Right now, I'm adding a special constituency code (to filter them from results for everyday users) and "potential duplicate" to an attribute. But I'm mostly stuck on what to put in the First and Last name fields (both required in our system) since it looks like these results auto-populate in the OLX email To: field.


Does anyone have a good system they can recommend?



 
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  • Steven Cinquegrana 2
    Steven Cinquegrana 2 ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hi Rachel,


    You might not like my answer, but here goes: Don't enter the data at all if it's only very raw contact information such as email addresses.


    In my opinion, though you can use the data to contact someone, you may be better off leaving it as a list separate to RE until you can flesh out the data with more information, say, from email campaign responses, or gifts.


    If you really want to bring it all into RE, given your mandatory field requirements, then you might have to add in fake info for the first/last name such as Email Only. Adding a source attribute might also be useful but I personally wouldn't add a ConCode as I think this might just end up being "noise" for your users.


    Regarding the risk of duplication, I would err on the side of matching with existing records, given the paucity of information in the new data. So if the emails match and whatever name data you have matches, it's a match. Email address is a very high-scoring field in data deduplication.


    Just my 2 cents.


    Cheers,

    Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions

     
  • Rachel Smith 2
    Rachel Smith 2 ✭
    Ninth Anniversary First Reply

    Steven Cinquegrana:

    Hi Rachel,


    You might not like my answer, but here goes: Don't enter the data at all if it's only very raw contact information such as email addresses.


    In my opinion, though you can use the data to contact someone, you may be better off leaving it as a list separate to RE until you can flesh out the data with more information, say, from email campaign responses, or gifts.


    If you really want to bring it all into RE, given your mandatory field requirements, then you might have to add in fake info for the first/last name such as Email Only. Adding a source attribute might also be useful but I personally wouldn't add a ConCode as I think this might just end up being "noise" for your users.


    Regarding the risk of duplication, I would err on the side of matching with existing records, given the paucity of information in the new data. So if the emails match and whatever name data you have matches, it's a match. Email address is a very high-scoring field in data deduplication.


    Just my 2 cents.


    Cheers,

    Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions

     

    Thanks Steve! ... Ideally, we would do this (I prefer your solution), but currently Online Express requires that these folks have a record in RE in order to email them. The alternative is either dumping these folks from our outreach or dumping OLX for our email marketing.

     

  • Jennifer Lange
    Jennifer Lange ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic

    I Rachel Smith:

    Steven Cinquegrana:

    Hi Rachel,


    You might not like my answer, but here goes: Don't enter the data at all if it's only very raw contact information such as email addresses.


    In my opinion, though you can use the data to contact someone, you may be better off leaving it as a list separate to RE until you can flesh out the data with more information, say, from email campaign responses, or gifts.


    If you really want to bring it all into RE, given your mandatory field requirements, then you might have to add in fake info for the first/last name such as Email Only. Adding a source attribute might also be useful but I personally wouldn't add a ConCode as I think this might just end up being "noise" for your users.


    Regarding the risk of duplication, I would err on the side of matching with existing records, given the paucity of information in the new data. So if the emails match and whatever name data you have matches, it's a match. Email address is a very high-scoring field in data deduplication.


    Just my 2 cents.


    Cheers,

    Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions

     

    Thanks Steve! ... Ideally, we would do this (I prefer your solution), but currently Online Express requires that these folks have a record in RE in order to email them. The alternative is either dumping these folks from our outreach or dumping OLX for our email marketing.

     

     

    I have the same problem... OLX won't let me

    send unless I have an email address. However, I get charged by record count in NXT. And how valuable are email only records?!?!    Then again-this may be the new normal in the digital age...

  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    This has been discussed since at/before bbcon2015 and I believe is under consideration by BB developers for some sort of solution (like a pseudo constituent record that doesn't count for pricing and doesn't have the full complement of fields available.


    As a possible alternative in the meantime, you can use one dummy record to store many email addresses (change your Business Rules to allow duplicate Phone Types, at least when you add them to this record) and then include that constituent record when assembling OLX lists.  Put the name (if known) as the Phone Comment, and any other information in a Constituent Note.  Just be consistent (i.e. "Hernandez, Robert" or "Robert Hernandez") so you can more easily use & search the data in the future.


    If you already use the OLX option to email Relationships, you could also add those names as Relationships to a dummy constituent, and email them that way.  If you have a decent amount of additional information, this may be the way to go, because you have more fields available, and if you need to upgrade one to a full Constituent Record, it's easy to do.  But if you don't already email to Relationships, I would do some testing with this first.
  • Gracie Schild
    Gracie Schild ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Photogenic

    Thanks Steve! ... Ideally, we would do this (I prefer your solution), but currently Online Express requires that these folks have a record in RE in order to email them. The alternative is either dumping these folks from our outreach or dumping OLX for our email marketing

    Hi - this is why we didn't go with OLX - we have tons of people in our Constant Contact list for whom we have NO information other than their email address. There was no way I was going to create hundreds of records in RE for that. If they engage in some way with Advancement, then they become a full record - or even a partial record, but at least a full Constituent.


    I liked Jen's idea of creating a consituent called Email Only, or similar, and adding relationships or just email addresses, though I imagine that would be very cumbersome to manage with hundreds of emails/relationships. Perhaps they could be divided some way - by name into several alpha breakouts and then the no-names, or by acquisition month (though I don't know how useful that would be). I'm sure someone has a work around! Right now, I just run a list of all emails for our Marketing Department every couple months and they get added to (and de-duped by) Constant Contact. 

  • Megan Shackle
    Megan Shackle ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic

    When we switched from Constant Contact to NetCommunity, we made the decision to collect more data from our email subscribers. It was both a data hygeine issue and a cultivation issue to have little to no information on these constituents. We've since found that requiring full name and address as well as email address doesn't affect our opt-in numbers by a ton, and those that sign up are less likely to opt-out because they were invested enough to provide their information. You could always send an email asking them to provide some more information on themselves as you switch to a new email system. In the end, we still have a few dummy records with the first name "Friend" and the last name "Friend ##", but asking for more info in the new system actually helped us merge quite a few duplicate records. We will now be switching to OLX, and I am much more confident in our data.

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