It’s Acquisition Season. Do you really know what’s going on in your merge/purge process?
Avoid looking only at your bottom line mailing quantity when you receive merge/purge reports from your data partner.
Instead, understand the merge process, analyze the details and dynamics of your data, and discuss the findings with your internal team, your data provider and your list broker. This will help you make much better business decisions about your prospecting campaigns.
Check out MMI’s “Demystifying Merge Purge Processing Reports” on demand training to get a thorough explanation of every merge purge report, plus valuable insights, testing ideas and red flags to watch out for from our expert trainer Marvin Dawson. So much learning in just 50 minutes!
We’ve also put together this Acquisition Data Merge Purge Reports Checklist to help you dive deeper into your merge/purge process:
- List of Lists: Documents all files received, quantities declared, and file conversion input and output statistics. Includes all lists in the merge: house files, rental lists, exchange lists, and suppression files. Look for significant variance between ordered and received quantities.
- List Hygiene Report: Usually all lists from the List of Lists will appear here, unless mailer specifies that certain files do not go through hygiene processing: lapsed donors, active donors, non-donor house files, outside prospect lists. This reports provides hygiene stats of individual lists.
- List Processing Report: Shows you what names were dropped prior to the merge. Review reject categories to make informed decisions about dropping names for future mailings. Drop categories can include: Deceased, NCOA, Prison Addresses, No ZIP+4/No ZIP, Unique ZIPs, Business Addresses (with or without individual name), Temporary Moves, Disaster Areas, Profanity/Buzzwords, and Vacant Lots. Are any of these categories higher or lower than you anticipated?
- Merge/Purge Summary: Look for unusually high number of drops. Are the percentage of names kept as you expected? Look for unusually high (or low) hits against another list or suppression file. Examine individual list information if you see something out of the norm.
- Match Analysis Matrix: This report shows the interaction between lists by percentage of matches and quantity of matches. Helps you understand the lists that have high percentages of overlap as well as lists that don’t overlap much at all.
- Multi-Buyer Summary: Multi-Buyer names appear on more than one acquisition list and typically perform better than individuals who appear on only one list. How are you going to cultivate them?
- List Broker Report: This report reflects all processing from the receipt of files through the merge/purge un-duplication process. Shared with your list/data brokerage partner to show input and output detail of each list for campaign reporting and future list planning.
- Counts by Package/Source Code: Unique source codes are assigned to each list and can be created for each package/list combination to precisely track results.
Merge/purge processing is a critical part of your donor prospecting strategy, so dive in!
Start by watching “Demystifying Merge Purge Processing Reports” on demand training featuring Marvin Dawson’s not-to-be-missed Pro Tips!
Contact us if you have any questions about your merge/purge process, or if you need help with your next acquisition campaign!
