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Exclusion Filters – Easy Campaign Control

The tech team at Stannp have released a great new update for our recipient filters, allowing you to exclude recipients that have already been sent to from any or all previous campaigns.

The Basics; Data Upload

The exclusion filter process starts when you upload your data; the choices you make when uploading your data effect how the filters work later on.

The first choice is whether the data you are uploading is going to be a new group or added to an existing group. Having chosen this, and given the group a name if it’s a new one, there are several drop down boxes with options to select how the Stannp platform treats your data.

First selection; ‘How to check for duplicates?’

Full name and address is the most detailed match, all of the details need to be the same for the system to see that as a duplicate.

For example with full name and address selected, the system would not see these two entries as duplicates;

Rob Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JZ

Robert Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JZ

Initial Level and Address matches the full address, but only the first letter of the first and last names.

With initial level and address selected, the system would see these two entries as duplicates;

Rob Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JZ

Robert Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JZ

But would not see these two address as duplicates;

Rob Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JZ

Robert Lott, Stannp Ltd, 12 Taw Trade Park, Barnstaple, EX31 1JB

Address Only ignores name fields, and only looks for duplicate entries in the address data.

Selecting this type of check means that the system will think that two different recipients at the same postal address are duplicates of each other, regardless of the fact that they have different names.

Email Address Only ignores all name and address fields and looks solely at the email address.

Selecting this type of check means that if you have the same email address associated with two different postal locations, the system will think they are duplicates of each other.

On the other hand if you have two different email addresses with the same postal location and person’s name, the system will not think they are duplicates of each other.

Second selection; ‘What shall we do if we find duplicates?’

Update duplicates and add to this group will update the records for any existing recipients identified as being duplicates with the new data you are uploading, changing their details to the new data you are uploading, and adding them to this new group.

Ignore duplicates found in any group will keep your existing data that is already on the Stannp platform and not upload any duplicate records identified in the new data set you are uploading.

Insert all duplicates as unique records will insert all of your records as new records, ignoring any duplication found. Do not do this if you intend to use exclusion filters!

A Note on Data Structure

We realise that data structure is perhaps not the most interesting subject in the world, but please bear with us as it’s important to understand how the filters work!

Your account on Stannp.com has it’s own unique database, and that one database contains all of the data fields (name, address, any custom fields etc.) for all of your recipients. each of your recipients is given a unique recipient ID by the Stannp platform.

You may have many recipient groups on your account and a recipient ID may well be associated with more than one group; there is a “one to many relationship” between your database and your groups.

For example the same recipient might be in your recipient groups for “January Reactivation Letter“, “May Thank You Postcard” and “August Special Offer Letter“. However, the recipient only exists once on the database, all of the recipient groups are looking at the same database record.

Each recipient is given a unique ID in your database and the exclusion filter uses this ID to filter out previous recipients. inserting all duplicates as unique records means that the duplicate records will get different IDs, and will therefore not get filtered out by the exclusion filters.

Using The Exclusion Filters

If you want to use the exclusion filters they can be applied at the ‘Select Data’ stage of the Stannp campaign wizard, by selecting the ‘exclude recipients‘ drop down menu.

This drop down menu will show you each of the campaigns you have previously sent through the Stannp platform.

You can choose ‘exclude recipients from all campaigns‘ at the top of the list to exclude everyone you have previously sent to, or you can select specific campaigns, either by clicking on them from the list or by typing a campaign name in the search box to the right.

In the example above we have excluded recipients from the campaign ‘Stannp ISO letter 20-05-19‘. of the 2,825 recipients in that campaign, six are also in the data set for our new campaign and have been excluded.

You can see that we now have have 76 addresses selected, rather than the 82 addresses we started with.

We hope you find our updated exclusion filters useful. Don’t forget, for more useful hints tips and info find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and speak to your account manager.

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