Constituents sharing an email address

Mark Lennon

Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way to manage situations where more than one constituent used the same email address (e.g. bobandmaryjones@hotmail.com) and email address is a field used to identify a record in integrations? Postal address uses Head of Household processing, but there is no equivalent for email.

Anybody else struggled with this?

Dariel Dixon

@Mark Lennon In cases such as a marital situation, why don't you just include the email only on the primary HOH? I know that means deleting it if it already exists on both records.

Marie Stark

@Mark Lennon I would also only have it on one record. If the person opts out of email it is problematic to have the same email on multiple records.

Wendy Albor

@Mark Lennon
We use RENT and IOM and found the shared email to be an issue when it is on both spousal accounts. A lot of the instances each donor gives multiple times throughout the year. We decided to merge the records (making sure the donors didn't specify to be on separate accounts beforehand) and add one of the spouses as a relationship then use a created Marital Status of Merged Spouses. This flags our staff that this was done because they use the same data when each spouse gives. Then when IOM importing of files, if the first name is different we validate using this status.

For other instances where we can't tell if it is a married couple, we review them on a case by case basis as to how we solve them. It gets tricky since we don't always have a direct contact with these donors to just plainly ask them.

Amy Barker

@Marie Stark
I absolutely agree with this!

Elizabeth Johnson

@Wendy Albor I would also recommend using that comment field if you are in the database view to indicate that the couple shares the address.