Parents and Children with same address

Jesse Calagna

Is there is an easy way to check if parents and children have the same addres so we don't send snail mail to both?

Miki Martin

Hi, @Jesse Calagna and welcome to the Community! I l see you're with a school like I am. Honestly I am not sure about an “easy” way to check addresses between parents and students. Depending on how big your school is or how many records you have in the database that could still be time intensive. Initially the thought that comes through my mind is to export the information to Excel and use a conditional format to verify the parents and students DO have the same information. I actually do this with the periodical we mail so I can make updates that might be missed by the NCOA update.

My office is responsible for mailing our periodical to current and past parents/alumnae so this had posed an issue for those alumnae still living at home, as we wanted to only mail one copy to each address. I ended up creating a Parent address type that I assign to all current students and those that are still living at home, then excluding that address type in mailings. We also have Current Student as a constituent code, which we exclude from all mailings, in addition to adding the Do not mail and Do not solicit solicit codes to Current Students. Once the girls graduate I remove the solicit codes but the address type stays the same.

Hope this helps!

Christine Cooke

Related to what @Miki Martin said.

Exporting the parents and students/alums out and then comparing the mailing addresses. It's intensive, but in the long run oh so helpful.

My solution is to add a Solicit Code to the Student record that is "Dupe in Household" that is used for particular mailings when we only want to send one to the household, such as a magazine. When is one per household it's easy to merge queries and remove those from the list. And also have a Household Addressee that is The Smith Family or The Jones Smith Family for those household mailings so that they aren't addressed to one or two people when it's really meant for everyone.