Clean mailing lists when many family members are in the database

Julie Hart · August 2018

Good Morning!

Looking for some good tips & tricks for suppressing children/multi-generational family members all living in same household for mailing lists. We have lots of teen volunteers whose parents are donors as well, and I usually have to do a fair amount of post-export clean-up when creating mailing lists to make sure we're only sending one piece to each household.

Thanks in advance!

JoAnn Strommen · August 2018

A similar clean up project is on my to do list. I plan to use a solicit code of "No newsletter - duplicate". Have been debating adding "family" or "professional" to define why it's a duplicate for when records change. Haven't decided on that piece yet.

Solicit code seems to be a pretty clean way to filter when pulling lists.

Melissa S Graves · August 2018

I have always favored post export cleanup on this. If you start marking the kids as do not mail or the like then what happens when they move out? Would you not want to mail to them? The management of an extra code for these kids I would find more problematic and frustrating than I would post export cleanup. One other option that may help limit the post export cleanup is to exclude anyone younger than 18 or so (assuming you have birthdates) but we still have lots of kids who remain living at home with their parents for many years beyond 18.

Theresa Rogers · August 2018

We are a boys school for grades 7-12, so our boys live with their parents for quite a number of years even after they graduate. We have found what works best is to assign them each an attribute labeled "Mail To:" with a Description of "Parents." We then assign the family a "Family Addressee" like "The Smith Family". Then when we have a large mailing going out, we can choose not to send to those with the above attribute on their record, as long as it is a mailing that their parents are receiving. The key to keeping this clean is removing the attribute whenever we are informed that a young man has his own address.

Christine Cooke 2 · August 2018

Julie Hart:

Good Morning!

Looking for some good tips & tricks for suppressing children/multi-generational family members all living in same household for mailing lists. We have lots of teen volunteers whose parents are donors as well, and I usually have to do a fair amount of post-export clean-up when creating mailing lists to make sure we're only sending one piece to each household.

Thanks in advance!

I have put a No Mail-Duplicate in Household on the minors or other family members (grandparents/aunts/uncles) in the Solicit Code and then subtract them out in a query merge before export. The mailing then goes to the HoH.

Bob Wiebe · August 2018

Christine Cooke bCREPro:

Julie Hart:

Good Morning!

Looking for some good tips & tricks for suppressing children/multi-generational family members all living in same household for mailing lists. We have lots of teen volunteers whose parents are donors as well, and I usually have to do a fair amount of post-export clean-up when creating mailing lists to make sure we're only sending one piece to each household.

Thanks in advance!

I have put a No Mail-Duplicate in Household on the minors or other family members (grandparents/aunts/uncles) in the Solicit Code and then subtract them out in a query merge before export. The mailing then goes to the HoH.

For what it is worth, we concatenate the several names into one cell, using Excel formulas. This hopefully provokes parents telling us when their kids have moved out!

J Baumann · September 2018

One organization I know has a Solicit Code that is "Youth Volunteer - no mass mailings" and it is used in Mail when any magazine, newsletter, fundraising lists, etc. are pulled. If it's just volunteer mail being processed, the Solicit Code can be ignored.

Clean mailing lists when many family members are in the database

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