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Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

  • 1.  Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-14-2024 02:39 PM
    Hello all,

    My offices at the Georgia Tech Foundation have recently onboarded the role of managing, updating and maintaining constituent records (alumni, donors. Friends).   We have an alumni statistics report we used to measure the number of known active addresses, active phone numbers and active email addresses we have on file.  In each of these respective categories we are currently showing the following out of a base of 207,599 living alumni:

    202,197 Known active, mailable alumni addresses - by percentage:  97.40%
    157,751 Known, active, callable alumni - by percentage: 75.99%
    123,365 Known, active, emailable alumni - by percentage:  59.42%

    As we work to establish benchmarks for these contact categories, I have been asked to inquiry as to what you all may have set at your various institutions as established percentage rate goals for maintaining active addresses, phones or email addresses or whether there is an established best practices percentage rate goal (other than 100% ��) for each of the categories of addresses, phones and email addresses).      

    Thank you. 

    Dwight

    Dwight D. Dozier
    Chief Information Officer
    The Georgia Tech Foundation
    760 Spring Street, Suite 400
    Atlanta, GA 30308
    (W) - 404-385-1518
    (C) - 470-270-4583


  • 2.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-14-2024 02:58 PM
    Dwight, your mail and phone rates are where they should be. However, I target 85% for email addresses. An email append through a reliable vendor - that validates the email addresses they obtain before giving them to you - should do the trick.

    A fourth area I focus on is employment data. I seek 50-60% verified employment information on my alumni (and major gift prospects) between the ages of 25-65.

    John

    John H. Taylor, Principal
    John H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
    2604 Sevier Street
    Durham, NC     27705

    919.816.5903 (cell/text)

    Serving the Advancement Community Since 1987






  • 3.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-14-2024 05:16 PM

    Hi John,

    Is there a place to find general benchmarks for this type of data? I'd like to measure this for our alumni population, so I'm curious what industry standards are and where I might find them.


    Thanks much for any guidance you can provide!



    ------------------------------
    Beth Colbert
    San Jose State University
    beth.colbert@sjsu.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-14-2024 05:53 PM
    It has been awhile since anyone attempted to benchmark these data points. Although I track these with my clients.

     There's to much disagreement (or lack of consensus to sound more positive) over which records to "count" in the calculation (which is why I specified an age range for employment data).

    And some look only at alums while I look at alums I plan to cultivate PLUS all major gift prospects.

    And outside of higher education the foci are quite different.

    That said, assuming you are in higher ed and focusing only on those alums you plan to solicit or cultivate:

    97% mailable
    85% emailable
    75% phoneable
    65% employment

    If you hit or exceed these values you are performing well.

    John

    John H. Taylor
    919.816.5903 (Cell/Text)

    Big Ideas - Small Keyboard





  • 5.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-14-2024 06:03 PM
    Thanks John,

    We are higher ed and primarily focused on alumni, so those numbers will work for us.

    Much appreciated!

    Beth


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beth L. Colbert, '86 '89
    Associate Vice President, Advancement and Campaign Operations

    University Advancement
    San Jose State University
    One Washington Square
    San Jose, CA 95192-0257
    408.924.1119










  • 6.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 09:26 AM

    Hi All....

    The Council of Alumni Association Executives performs an annual survey which provides some of this benchmarking data.  If your institution is a member, I believe you can access this.  CAAE | Home (alumniexecutives.org)

    In general, the stats for public institutions are a little lower than for private institutions. 

    Terry Callaghan

    Zuri Group

    aasp Executive Board



    ------------------------------
    Terry Callaghan
    Zuri Group
    terry@zurigroup.com
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 09:34 AM

    Regarding email, you are going to see different %s depending on if your institution has alumni/graduate emails or "email for life" where students can keep their emails after graduation.  That introduced a whole other issue of ensuring those accounts are actually being used by the alum.  Our institution just changed its graduate email retention to allow accounts to be inactivated after a year of no login. 



    ------------------------------
    Jeff Baynham
    NC State University
    jtbaynha@ncsu.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 10:02 AM
    Thanks for bringing up email-for-life, Jeff. I disregard those in my statistics for the reasons you imply. They are often not maintained. I suggest my clients seek bonafide work or home email addresses.

    John

    John H. Taylor, Principal
    John H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
    2604 Sevier Street
    Durham, NC     27705

    919.816.5903 (cell/text)

    Serving the Advancement Community Since 1987







  • 9.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 01:23 PM

    Terry –


    Where on CAAE would one find the benchmarking data?
    (Is there an annual report released?)

     

     

    ____________________________________________________________________
    Christopher Amherst | Director, Data Management

    He/him

    The University of Chicago | Alumni Relations and Development

    5235 South Harper Court | Chicago, Illinois 60615

    Office: + 1   7 7 3   8 3 4   1 0 7 2

    [This message and its contents are confidential. If you received this message in error, do not use or rely upon it. Instead, please inform the sender and then delete it. Thank you.]

      

     






  • 10.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 02:04 PM
    Hi Christopher....  There is a report of the annual survey that is released to members, from what I recall.  There was lots of great benchmarking information.  Unfortunately, I no longer work at a member institution, but it was helpful when I was.  





  • 11.  RE: Data Quality and Address - Phone - Email Goals

    Posted 10-15-2024 01:22 PM

    Dwight,

    I'm in agreement with John on the email percentage (and the employment data %)

     

    For an engineering school - the alumni % should be higher.
    (It's been a few years - but at RIT - our mail was 90%+, our phones were about 77%, our email was closer to 70%)


    For the callable %,  I'd recommend splitting phones into a textable % as most alumni will have a mobile.

     

    Having said that - at UChicago, I'm moving my team away from contactability % as a measure of data quality and toward what we call the Consistency/Verified/Recency assessment (aka CoVeR)

     

    I may live in IL currently, but you may have an active landline for me in NY.  Which one is accurate?

    The data may be verified – but it's inconsistent.  And if I haven't responded to any mail or calls, it may not be recent.

     

    ____________________________________________________________________
    Christopher Amherst | Director, Data Management

    He/him

    The University of Chicago | Alumni Relations and Development

    5235 South Harper Court | Chicago, Illinois 60615

    Office: + 1   7 7 3   8 3 4   1 0 7 2

    [This message and its contents are confidential. If you received this message in error, do not use or rely upon it. Instead, please inform the sender and then delete it. Thank you.]