Segmenting a mailing list is an industry best practice; to do it successfully you’ll need clean, unduplicated, and accurate data.

Start by thoroughly identifying your mailing strategy.

• Who is your audience(s)?
• How will you target your communication so that you engage each audience in the best possible way?
• Do you have the capacity to handle the extra work required to segment your mailing list, or do you need to simplify?

Maybe you want to send different messaging to a renewing donor and a lapsed donor, or to an alumna of your program and a program volunteer.

Define your segments, and then take one more step: prioritize them.

Make a numbered list of each segment, starting with the most important—the segment you want to trump all the others—and ending with the segment of everyone else. Place constituents in the highest priority list if they apply to more than one. This will help you avoid duplication; no donor wants to get two of the same mailing.

Here is an example:

1. Donors this year
2. Donors last year, but not this year
3. All volunteers

Someone who gave $10 to your organization this year might also be a volunteer, meaning they are in both segment one and three. Avoid sending them two letters by removing them from list three.

Review your list of segments. Identify how your eTapestry database tracks the information that defines each segment.

• What field(s) holds information about the segment?
• Is the information available in a report summary field?

Do you want to mail to a segment defined by…

• Date of first or last gift? Include a summary field in your report for First Received Date and Last Received Date so you can segment new and existing donors.
• Size of donor? Consider segmenting on summary fields for giving by year, or query on donors with cumulative received greater than a particular amount in a given year.
• Type of account or constituent? Include fields like Account Type, Organization Type, or another attribute-based user defined field (UDF).

Start a list of eTapestry fields that hold the data you will need.

Tip: Always add Account Number and Account Name to your data list. Be sure to report on these fields, as they are important if you import account updates or journal contact records into eTapestry after sending your mailing.

How will you be contacting your donors? By mail or email? Will you be using a mail house, eTapestry mass communications template (email or letter), or an external email service like MailChimp? Each of these distribution methods will require certain information from eTapestry that should be included in your mailing list report. Add any specific information requirements to your eTapestry data list.

By Mail

• Short Salutation
• Long Salutation
• Envelope Salutation
• All address fields

Tip: Use the Multi-Country Address Fields if you are mailing to constituents in multiple countries.

By Email

• Email (First Address)
• Email
• Short or Long Salutation

The way you track households in eTapestry will influence your mailing list query and report. Every organization does this differently so there isn’t a perfect best practice.

Consider these options for running your unduplicated mailing list:

• If you use household relationships, set up your query to return head of household accounts (HHA) as the data return type. This data return type will return one account for the household unit, so you receive an unduplicated mailing list.
• If you save all household data in one account, set up your query to return accounts (A). Report on the joint persona (or the persona that carries household data).
• If you don’t track households consistently in eTapestry, you can export your data as accounts (A) to Excel and de-duplicate by the address, phone, or email address fields. This isn’t perfect, but it is a functional workaround if your eTapestry data doesn’t track households.

Tip: No matter how you save household data, it is best practice to do a duplicate search on your final mailing list. Sort your list by two separate values. I recommend Account Name and either Address or Email, depending on the type of communication you are planning.

If you ask your constituents for their communication preferences, make sure you are respecting them. You don’t want to send a letter to a major donor addressed to her and her recently deceased husband!

Avoid common pitfalls. Consider how you track communication preferences and mailing exclusions in your database. Add these fields to your data list, so you can exclude accounts that should not be contacted.

• Account Type: Do you only want to mail to individual constituents, or perhaps only to businesses? You can segment that data with this field.
• Mailing Status: Remove people that are flagged with Do Not Mail, Do Not Solicit, Deceased, Bad Address, or Inactive.
• Other Communication Preferences: If you track other communication preferences that are relevant to your planned approach, be sure to include that field and/or value in your data list for exclusion.

Tip: Avoid undeliverable mail with the AddressFinder feature—which compares addresses in your database against National Change of Address records—every ninety days to keep your constituent addresses current.