Email Cleanup

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Autumn Hubbard
Autumn Hubbard
Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello! I am looking for recommendations on how some of you might have cleaned up your records' email addresses.



A little background on the data situation -- Currently, we have several different types of e-mail addresses in our table, and some will have multiple with the same type (for example, type of 'email' for two addresses, one of which is invalid). I'd like to change it so that only the ones NOT marked as invalid have the type of 'email' and change all the other invalid ones to a different type. The purpose would be to make our email exports easier, so that I do not have to ask for multiple email addresses to be exported and then sort through them based on yes/no invalid. The goal would be to know that anything with the type of 'email' is currently valid.



Has anybody gone through a similar email cleanup process? If so, any tips or suggestions?



Thank you!
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Comments

  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I think your best option is going to be to Export everything, clean it up by changing the Phone Type, and then Import your changes.  We have eHome & eWork for valid email addresses and XeHome & XeWork for invalid or unsubscribed email addresses, and that's how I did most of the transition to our new/current system.  If you use the Import function to create your Export file, the required fields and all of the appropriate field names will be in place.
  • Joost Groen
    Joost Groen
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Loyalty
    Like Jennifer said: export everything (Admin-->Import-->Constituent Phones-->Create Import File) and then change all the phonenumbers/email addresses.



    At our organisation (we use RE 7.94) people are not allowed to use 2 times the Phonenumber type "Email". Also we don't use the "invalid" option.

    A second or old emailaddress is recorded into our database as Email2. Or if necessary, Email3. So when someone has 1 emailaddress and you receive (from a specific/unknown source) a new emailaddress, we move the old emailaddress to Phonenumber type "Email2" and the new emailaddress will get the Phonenumber type "Email".



    This way, when I am exporting or creating a list of emailaddresses of a particular group of constituents I only have to select the Phonenumber type "Email". 



    Conclusive: I would advice you to transform the "inactive" Email Phonenumber types to an Email2, Email3 (or something similar) and have only 1 phonenumber type "Email" (which is always the "Active" type).
  • Bradley Henry
    Bradley Henry
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic Loyalty
    We have a policy that you can only have one email of any given type, however there is one email type that we do allow multiple entries for.



    Here is the list of emial types we currently use

    E-mail Preferred

    E-mail Alternate

    E-mail Personal

    E-mail Business

    E-mail Former (This is the only email type allowed to have multiple entries)



    Although our RE 7.94 (Hosted) is not configured to restrict multiple entries we have a process to look for multiple entries and change a duplicate email type to a different type. When an email has been advised as no longer in use we change it to the E-mail Former (and also make it inactive).



    If you are going to export your emails to try and clean them up I would create your additional email types first.

    Config > Tables > Phone Types. 



    I would also suggest you start using the "inactive" feature, when a Phone, E-mail, Link...is made inactive it no longer is visible in the field (to view inactive phone/emails there is a tick box in the bottom left of the phones section) 



    If you decide to use the inactive tickbox you can export it when you do your clean up, this way you can change the Yes/No field on all the emails you want to mark as inactive and when you re-import it back in they will no longer be visible unless you select the show inactive box.



    Hope this helps.

    Bradley.
  • Robert Flynn
    Robert Flynn
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    The only "method" I am aware of is to do an export (presumably from previous addresses).  Open the export file (we used Excel) insert a null in the phone number or e-mail field.  Import them back inot RE and then use the "Delete Phones" plug-in with the "blank phone number" criteria selected.  There is a procedure for this on the RE Knowledge base.
  • Bradley Henry
    Bradley Henry
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic Loyalty
    I was just re-reading your question and I think I may have missunderstood what you are trying to do.



    are you saying you have multiple emails stored in the email type "email" and that some of them are marked inactive?



    If this is the case then there is a simple way to change all of the inactive emails to a different type so you can do data export on the email type "email" and only get the active one.



    Make sure your table has an email type like inactive-email or old-email or in our case E-mail Former.

    Export ALL emails, make sure you include the import ID and the "Is Inactive" field.

    filter in the export .CSV file in Excel on the "Is Inactive" field to select ALL the emails marked as inactive.

    now change the email Type to what ever you have created as the email type IE: E-mail former 

    re-import the emails back into the database. 



    Let me know if you want further clarification.

    Bradley.

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