LIST MERGE/ PURGE (DEDUPE)

When a number of lists are combined for one mailing, there’s a strong possibility duplicates will occur. Using our list purge (deduplication) option helps correct that possibility. No one wants to mail the information twice (or more) to the same person; that’s wasteful, and tends to irritate the recipient.

List Purge is the process of determining duplicate records between all lists as well as within each list, based on match criteria and list priority.

In addition to ensuring that you’re not mailing something multiple times to the same person, there are several other benefits to deduping. If you’re using external lists, you want to ensure you’re not paying for names you already have. Also, deduping will show if there are not enough names for your mailing (because of too many duplications) and whether your match criteria are sufficient. List purge (dedupe) consolidation software is used to purge various records of duplications, so the end result is one name and address per mailing or a variation thereof.

We have several types of purges that we perform, depending on what our clients want:

• Exact Dedupe: This logic will look at the first and last name and dedupe on only these fields
• House holding Dedupe:  This Logic will look at the address only and keep only one record per address.
• Multiple per address Depupe:   This is typically used for business lists when you want to have multiple contacts at one location to stay on the list. This will only keep 1 of the same contact per location based on first and last name
• Custom Dedupe: This logic is based on any field(s) in the data set that you would like us to create custom logic on. An example could be social security number, or phone and S.S.N.

Once we are finished with your list purge and deduping, you have several options in regards to the duplicates:

1. We can give you the duplicate records back and let you decide which to keep
2. We handle the removal of the duplicates and give you a final count
3. We remove the duplicate and give you a report of the records deleted.

When a client has multiple databases, a lot of the times there are some data elements (fields) that are missing or more current on one of the databases and not the others.

The List Merge is the process of MOVING different data elements from one database to another.