Spring is the official season for cleaning, but any season of the year is good for tidying up your database. There is no ‘quick fix’ for data; it simply takes time and care. Here are some tips to get you started.
View this May 2021 Webinar covering 5 Reports to Run in Your Membership Database for more insight and tips on cleaning your database.
Eyeball your full list of organizations and individuals
Go into Contacts, and do a blank organization search, so that you get all the records in the database. Look at the very top records on the first page, and then also the very last page of results.
- Any ‘odd balls’ there? Organizations with seemingly blank names? (Meaning an import error or potentially someone ‘spaced’ through it in an attempt to remove it from the database.)
- Any that are sorting at the top but shouldn’t be? (e.g., if ‘Golf Balls International’ is sorting at the top rather than with the G’s, then there may be some hidden characters in the name field or an issue in the sort field.)
Do the same for Individuals.
Organizations with Similar Names might be duplicates
Under Contacts -> Reports -> Organizations, give the ‘Organizations with Similar Names‘ report a try. You may discover some duplicates that you were unaware of.
Merging Organizations
To Merge Organizations, got to Contacts -> Organizations -> Merge Organizations. Put in the ID of your ‘Keeper’ record and the ID of your ‘Looser’ record. The keeper should be the organization who’s membership you want to keep. Click to merge and you will be able to switch some of the details between the keeper and looser records before the final merge.
Organization with too many duplicate addresses
Under Contacts -> Reports -> Organizations, give the ‘Organization with more than 10 addresses‘ report a try. You may discover some duplicate addresses that you can merge away.
Organizations with no Primary Contact
If you have organizations in your database with no Primary (Key) Contact, you may be missing a vital link with that organizations. To find these organizations, run the following report:
Reports -> Organization-> Organization Query Builder -> and then select Contacts -> Does Not Have Primary Contact
and if you then wish additionally to narrow to only active member organizations, click the + to add a new query clause and then select Membership -> Primary Membership -> Status -> is -> Active
Organizations with missing addresses information
If there are organizations in your database with missing address informating, you can easily find then so that you may find and add their addresses information by running the following Query Builder report. This report will find any addresses that do not have a line1 in the address
Reports -> Organization-> Organization Query Builder -> and then select Addresses -> Any Address -> line1 -> Is Blank
Lapsed Members still on Committees
Remember that MatrixMaxx does NOT automatically remove an individual from a committee if their membership lapses. There are too many exceptions in committee governance, and this can not safely be coded. So this report is designed to help you identify people who are still on the committees but perhaps shouldn’t still be there, so they can be removed.
Under Contacts -> Reports -> Organizations, give the ‘Nonmember Committee Members‘ report a try. You may discover some individuals who need to be edited and given the boot!
Identify emails that are bouncing and correct them
Lucky enough to have some spare time, or an intern? If you’re using MailingMaxx to send out emails, check the delivery report and start contacting individuals with bouncing emails. Has your association been blacklisted by their filters? Has their email changed? Have they left their organization? Maybe they’ve gone to a new organization who needs to join yours!
Communication -> Reports -> Delivery Report
Individuals without Email Addresses
Ten years ago, there were a lot of email data gaps in databases. But these days, you don’t want individuals without emails in your database. (In fact, your MatrixMaxx implementation may now be set to REQUIRE a UNIQUE email addresses to be filled in every individual record. If your implementation is not set this way, but you’d like to upgrade to this setting, please let us know.)
To quickly find the email gaps in your database, you may start by doing an Individual Query Builder search for individuals without email address filled in:
Reports -> Individual -> Individual Query Builder -> and then select Individual Fields -> Email -> Is Blank
For easier/faster reference by multiple staff, we recommend you create and save a list that contains individuals without email addresses (sliced by any subcriteria that would be useful to you, like member, Primary Contact, etc.)
To do this; go to the Communications module and create a list of all individuals in the database (or a subset of your choosing) without an email address. And presto! You now have a list you can review, export, hand off to an intern, etc. We recommend that association staff use this list to start to contact members and ‘fill in the blanks’. Even if you just contact one a day or even one a week, every step you take makes your data better.
A use case we are encountering more frequently now that associations are doing more virtual events is meeting attendees without email addresses . Members who were not previously engaged, and may have very old records, are registering and then not receiving confirmations and/or not properly getting website protected access if the integrated CMS requires an email address (e.g., SiteFinity 10 and higher).
- First, create a list of registered meeting attendees. Most of you do this anyways. e.g., Most of you have lists called names like ‘AnnualMeeting2020-registrants’
- If you have linked an internal MailingMaxx Mailman list or an external MailChimp list, you’ll be able to tell right away if some users don’t have emails because the ‘total’ number of individuals will be greater than the number on the attached list.
- AND if you’ve linked to an internal MailingMaxx Mailman list, you can link directly from the intranet list view pages to a 1-click ‘Number Lacking Email Addresses:’ report that will show you the people missing emails
- If you have not created a linked Mailman list, you may isolate these individuals by creating a second list called something like ‘AnnualMeeting2020-registrants-no-email’
- Add your main list as the first Inclusive criteria
- Then, add an exclude criteria to take off the individuals with emails
Individuals with no organization affiliation
For Trade Associations, it is often very important for all individuals in your database to be affiliated with an organization. To find individuals that do not have and organization affiliation, you can run the following Query Builder report:
Reports -> Individual -> Individual Query Builder -> and then select Organizations -> Not attached to an organization
Deleting or Merging Individuals
To Merge Individuals, got to Contacts -> Individuals-> Merge Individuals. Put in the ID of your ‘Keeper’ record and the ID of your ‘Looser’ record. The keeper should be the Individual who’s membership you want to keep. Click to merge and you will be able to switch some of the details between the keeper and looser records before the final merge.
To Delete Individuals, go to the members profile, at the bottom of page locate the red button ‘Delete Individual Permanently’. A reason one might want to ‘Delete Individual’ vs ‘Merge Individual’ is when there is more than one individual with the same name/company. Delete the individual who is attached to nothing (activities, meetings, mailing lists, etc..)
Hiding Individuals
Another option that MatrixMaxx can implement on a per client basis is the addition of a ‘Hidden’ Personal Status, which functions in similar ways to the generic ‘Deceased’ status. Associations should be cautious requesting for this feature to be implemented as it can lead to staff confusion and an increase in duplicates being created in your database. (internal reference 105578) Please contact Matrix if you are interested in additional help/support in cleaning and maintaining your database!