Data hygiene is fundamental to responsive nonprofit organizations, but it's easy for even the cleanest data to get stale over time. Virtuous' data append services are designed to promote the health of your CRM's data integrity. Having updated and correct mailing addresses for your supporters will lead to better engagement and stronger connections. One way to keep your mailing addresses fresh is by running a reverse phone append on your supporters information to find their associated mailing address. This guide provides a general FAQ on the reverse phone append process.
Table of Contents
- What Is A Reverse Phone Append?
- How Can A Reverse Phone Append Help My Organization?
- What Is The Process?
- Will I Get Results for Every Record I Submit?
- How Long Does It Take?
- Can I Append International Data?
- What Is The Zip File Sent To Me After The Reverse Append Runs?
- How Are We Billed?
- What’s Next?
What Is A Reverse Phone Append?
A reverse phone append is a service that uses an Individual’s phone number and name to add new or missing postal addresses through public and private sources to enhance your existing CRM data. This is used to identify the Primary Contact Method only. Note: a reverse phone append is different from a typical phone append, which finds phone numbers for Individuals using other Contact information. Find more information on phone appends here.
How Can A Reverse Phone Append Help My Organization?
Running a reverse phone append can help your organization by helping more mail get delivered, and in return, more donors engaged. This means appeals, Receipts, and event invites reach the right mailbox instead of getting returned or tossed out. Running a reverse phone append also lowers your costs by letting you suppress bad addresses, supports accurate householding of your donors, and reduces duplicates during Imports and merges. This type of append can be particularly helpful for organizations with many donors where phone numbers are known but mailing addresses may be out of date or unknown.
What is the Process?
The process to append mailing addresses through phone numbers includes:
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Create an Individual Query in your database and name it Data Append: Reverse Phone Append. Filter for:
- Has Phone? > Is true
- Address > Is not known. (It may be helpful to run an NCOA after the reverse phone append to validate any new addresses. Click here to learn more about the NCOA process.)
- Any other groups you wish to exclude; for example, deceased individuals or those with an anonymous name.
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Export your Query as CSV. Select the following fields to be included:
- Contact Id, Contact Type, and Contact Name
- Individual Id, Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, and Suffix
- Primary Address Line 1, Line 2, City, State/Province, Postal, Country
- Phone
- Open a support ticket with the Virtuous Support Team that includes the type of data append you want (for example, a reverse phone append) and the exact name of your Individual Query. Click here to learn more about submitting support tickets.
- The Virtuous team member will confirm your request and billing, if relevant. They will use your Query to export the Contact and Individual Information to search public and private data sources for appending the addresses.
- Once records are matched, the update will be made to your CRM. Our team will follow up with your results, noting the number of Individuals submitted and the number that were successfully matched with addresses. The Virtuous team member will also send a zip file of the raw data containing line by line information on what was submitted, what was updated, and how it was updated.
Will I Get Results for Every Record I Submit?
No. Match rates may vary based on the completeness and accuracy of your data. Invalid, outdated or business phone numbers may result in fewer matches. Anonymous names (like Friend or Default) will also not return results. In some cases, an Individual's data simply isn't available in the public and private sources we use.
How Long Does It Take?
Data appends typically take between 2-3 business days to process after your list of Individuals has been submitted. Timing may vary based on weekends and holidays, or if any questions arise.
Can I Append International Data?
The reverse phone append only considers US data sources.
What Is The Zip File Sent To Me After The Reverse Append Runs?
After the Reverse Append is processed and the updates are made to your CRM, you will be sent a zip file of the raw data containing line by line information on what was submitted, what was updated, and how it was updated.
This zip file does not require any action, however, it may be helpful to use these files to spot check the updates the Virtuous team made to ensure all records have been updated correctly. Some organizations keep these files for a few months as a backup of their original data. The file include the following reports:
- CASS Summary Report: Shows that address data from the reverse phone append was processed using USPS-certified CASS software. Confirms software used, processing dates, total records, and basic USPS validation statistics.
- Data Quality Summary: Provides an overall snapshot of address quality. Shows how many addresses received ZIP+4, DPV, and other USPS validations, plus counts of vacant or incomplete addresses.
- File Layout Report: Lists and defines every field in the output file from the reverse phone append. Explains the meaning of address fields, validation codes, match indicators, phone type, phone score, and returned name and address information.
- Reverse Phone Append Summary: Summarizes match results. Shows how many phone numbers matched, residential versus business matches, phone types, and confidence scores for the returned phone data.
- Address Quality Report: Gives detailed USPS address validation information. Includes ZIP+4, carrier route, delivery point barcode results, DPV status codes, LACSLink and SuiteLink outcomes, address classifications, vacancy information, and delivery indicators.
How Are We Billed?
You are billed per address returned, not per record submitted. This means if you submit 6,000 records for an address update but only 2,000 are returned with results, you will only be charged for the 2,000. Pricing for reverse phone appends start at $380 and depend on the number of records returned.
If your Virtuous subscription already includes a set number of data appends per year, you will not be billed. If you'd like to add data appends to your contract in the future, contact your CSM or reach out to customersuccess@virtuous.org.
What’s Next?
After the reverse email append has been completed, we recommend running an NCOA (National Change of Address) verification on the newly acquired addresses. This step is helpful as the addresses found through the reverse phone append process may be outdated. The NCOA check will confirm that the address is current and validated for mailing to the donor.
Want help turning these results into workflows, targeted Campaigns, or more? To learn more about how Professional Services can help you, check out this resource.