Deduping a List to Maximize Your ROI

June 27, 2016
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If you’re new to the merge purge world, the process of “deduping” may seem a bit mysterious.  But once you understand a few basic principles, you can dedupe your lists with confidence. The first thing to know is that when you’re trying to determine whether two records are duplicates, you can choose between three sets[...]
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Are You Sure What the Flags in Your Database Mean?

June 13, 2016
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If you’re like us, you’ve probably had the experience of wondering exactly what a flag in your database signifies.  Was “Xmas15” meant to indicate that this person should be sent the December 2015 mailing, that they made a donation in response to that mailing, or that they’ve promised to make another major donation at this[...]
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How to Reactivate Lapsed Donors

May 26, 2016
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According to the Association of Fundraising Professional’s 2016 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey of 9,922 nonprofits, only 46% of donors who contributed to a nonprofit in 2014 made a repeat gift in 2015.  In other words, more than half of each organization’s donors from the previous year disappeared! Since a marketing rule of thumb is that it[...]
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Optimizing Your Ask String

May 12, 2016
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One of the most crucial elements of an effective solicitation letter is to ask for a donation of the right size.  If a donor has given $100 to you twice before, you are leaving cash on the table if you suggest a donation of $25.  Alternatively, if a donor never gives more than $15 to[...]
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Optimizing Your Merge Purge Operations

May 9, 2016
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  Organizations looking to expand their customer or donor base will often rent lists of recent donors or customers from similar organizations.  Prior to sending a direct mail solicitation to these prospects, it is important to clean up these lists by eliminating duplicate names and suppressing the records of people who are already on your[...]
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Cultivating Direct Mail Multi-Buyers

April 25, 2016
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In the search for new donors, direct mailers often rent lists of people who have donated to similar organizations.  Names that appear on more than one acquisition list are called Multi-Buyers. Because these individuals have contributed to multiple organizations, multi-buyers tend to perform better than those who appear on only one acquisition list.   Therefore, you[...]
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Using Modeling to Optimize Your Direct Mail List

April 11, 2016
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One of the most potentially-rewarding merge purge operations you can do is to use modeling to improve the responsiveness of your list. Modeling organizations use massive databases containing billions of transactions to estimate the responsiveness of records to various appeals.  While each organization does it slightly differently, modeling organizations typically use market segmentation analysis to[...]
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Choosing the Best Merge Purge Record to Keep

March 14, 2016
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A question that arises when you’re testing different acquisition lists is how to choose which record to keep when a potential donor’s name appears on two different lists.  Like many other issues related to list management, this type of decision can be surprisingly complicated! Of course, if one of the records is on your house[...]
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Choosing Match Criteria to Dedupe Your List

March 1, 2016
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Deduping improves the ROI of a mailing by removing duplicate records from the mailing list. But despite the simplicity of the concept, the process of deduping can be quite complex. There are two key types of rules you need to decide upon for your deduping process. The first one is what level of deduping best[...]
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Why It’s Crucial to Test Your Data Hygiene Options

February 15, 2016
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When you consider testing ways to improve your direct mail’s response rate, you probably think first about experimenting with a different headline or a more compelling offer. But while it may not be top-of-mind, testing your data hygiene decisions can be every bit as important as testing your creative. Data hygiene decisions can have a[...]
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