Merge / Query List

Jessica Rochester:
Hi, I'm new to RE, this is the first mail list we are pulling. I'm not confident that our salutations/addressees all converted properly, so I'm going about this using queries instead of using the mail tool. I wrote one query that captured everyone and then another query that includes a subset of constituents I want to suppress from the query. I guess I have two questions - when is it appropriate to use merge and when is it appropriate to make a query list. Either way - the grand total of the number of records resulting from the merge and/or list is higher than I expect it to be. It is not # of records in query 1 - # of records in query #2. It is actually quite a bit higher. Any advice is welcome. Thank you! - Jessica

I assume you are then taking the rsulting query to export to actually get your mailing list. Never pull your mailing list from query. Mail is #1 choice, Export is #2.

Any reason why you think query will help with add/sals where export will not?

You never said whether you were trying to combine two lists or subtract one list from another.

Jessica Rochester:
Thanks, Melissa. I know that it isn't the right approach to pull a mail list from query. What I'm having trouble with (outside of the add/sal - which I now recall I can tinker with in the export) is that the logic we are trying to use to exclude donors who only want one mailing per year just isn't working in RE. It is a hold over from our access database. I'm trying to exclude selected solicit codes, but don't have just one independent code to exclude. I think the best thing to do, now that I've mulled over the structure in the mail report, is to write a query that finds my once a year at the holiday donors and give them a solicit code that represents that preference. Then I will be able to use the mail report.

UM - I would NEVER do that.

Giving once a year is wholely different from expressing an interest in being solicited only once a year.

Donors who are solicited multiple times a year, even if they give only once a year, are  retained at a much higher rate than those who, at their request, get only one solicitation a year. Doing what I thknk you are suggesting could have a negative affect on your donor retention rate.

Melissa Graves:

UM - I would NEVER do that.

Giving once a year is wholely different from expressing an interest in being solicited only once a year.

Donors who are solicited multiple times a year, even if they give only once a year, are  retained at a much higher rate than those who, at their request, get only one solicitation a year. Doing what I thknk you are suggesting could have a negative affect on your donor retention rate.

Jessica Rochester:
In Access we used to create a query where 1x per year was true and other mailing options were false. I created a similar query in RE. I see that in the mail function I can include only selected records. However, I still need a way to pull out my sub group from my records that fit the broader criteria. This brings me back to the original problem -- I need to be able to create a query that pulls these people out of the bigger group. This is where I'm having trouble. I know my original group has 12,000 names and my restricted group has 1,000 names. The merged query should only have 11,000. However, it has more than my expected value. It seems that maybe I'm missing something critical here?

Jessica Rochester:
In Access we used to create a query where 1x per year was true and other mailing options were false. I created a similar query in RE. I see that in the mail function I can include only selected records. However, I still need a way to pull out my sub group from my records that fit the broader criteria. This brings me back to the original problem -- I need to be able to create a query that pulls these people out of the bigger group. This is where I'm having trouble. I know my original group has 12,000 names and my restricted group has 1,000 names. The merged query should only have 11,000. However, it has more than my expected value. It seems that maybe I'm missing something critical here?

Jessica,  What fields are you outputting as part of your query?  Certain fields an definitely affect the number of records pulled - often called a 'one to many'.  It typically happens with address/phone/constituent codes etc.  Did you look at your query results?  Did you see some names listed more than once?  If so, you'd need to take your query to the export function to see they # of unique records the query is pulling.

Does that make sense?