pay attention to detail
About 20 years ago, I worked at a membership association that was preparing for an annual campaign. At the time, this meant downloading lists of names and addresses from a membership database, conducting an enormous mail merge on letters and address labels, printing everything out, and assembly line tackling the project. Fold the letter, stuff it in the envelope, seal and stamp. Over and over again, with a sponge for the glue strip (remember the Seinfeld episode where George’s fiancée died from licking too many stamps?).
The association had a known problem: this was a membership demographic that included a lot of retired executives, and more than one widow had complained more than once that the membership letter was still arriving annually for a member – their now deceased husband – who was long departed.
There was another problem, more mysterious: occasionally zip codes were printing with only four digits, and those letters were being returned.
Managing the membership database was one element of my new responsibilities, so I set to tackle both problems.
The first problem, sending letters we should not be sending, was a matter of labels and process. We developed a new rule around how to label records in the database to show when one person in a household had been reported as deceased, and a new process for recording this label within the system and handling the circumstance more gracefully.
The second matter, getting some letters returned to us, was more technical. The membership association was based in the Midwest, where zip codes tend to start with a nice solid digit: all Minnesota and Wisconsin zip codes start with a five. I grew up in Maine, where zip codes start with a zero. Apparently, and this was the first time I noticed this – zip codes grow larger as you move from east to west! When I scanned a list of the mysterious four-digit zip codes, I realized they were members who lived along the east coast. There was a geographic pattern of sorts, and I discovered that all of their zip codes began with a zero. Somewhere between the database and the mail merge process, the zero was being dropped.
These days, CRMs are prepared for these matters and many others. We can now be more sure of data accuracy, and labeling and categorizing and segmenting are all options. The CRM I use will pop up a map view of an address and autofill a zip code!
However, as these three examples show, options create more opportunity for error:
I received an email the other day, a monthly update I always enjoy from a local designer I appreciate. Her message was friendly and seasonally relevant, and mid-sentence I read: …and, [First name], I’m already seeing a difference. Her carefully crafted message, with my name scattered throughout, had a missed detail. And now when I receive her newsletter, I’m distracted by seeing if she made the same mistake again. I flagged it, as an example of an error.
I used to receive a weekly newsletter from a cooperative grocery store building a local community, growing their membership, and providing educational topics. Each week, the email preheader – that secondary subject line that sometimes appears, depending on where and how you read your email – read [insert your secondary subject line here]. This means someone had disrupted the default, which is to pull in the beginning of the email itself, in hopes of including an attention-grabbing preheader. It grabbed my attention because I was amused that the inserted directions remained in place, week after week.
Recently, I received a “Dear NAME” email. This was from an organization I’ve long supported – as a volunteer, an employee, a donor, and a committee member. I get emails from this organization all the time, and they usually say “Dear Sarah” at the start. Somehow, someone assembled this latest missive – an ask for a donation – and missed a setup step. I don’t know if everyone in that batch got a “Dear NAME” message or if somehow my record had a blank. I know this was one mistake, in one email, and not a personal slight. But, professionally, it made me wonder how this happened. And personally, it hurt my feelings. Just a little.
Quality control and data accuracy are important. Knowing what is automated and what needs manual interference matters. These are just three examples – I’m sure you have others. Names can have errors in a whole variety of ways (misspellings, mixing up first and last names, mismatching emails with individual records, sending a message to the wrong group). Having a process in place to catch these errors will reduce the likelihood of looking foolish, appearing incapable, or offending someone.
Tools can create tremendous efficiencies and improve quality greatly, but to achieve professionalism consistently, be sure to check for errors.