Selecting Customers by History

Hands up who prefers their software with misterious features! Who would be thrilled to learn one day that the program they bought can actually do more than originally promised!

Selecting customers and contacts by their communications history may have been one of the best kept secrets of Simply Contacts Database. But now time has come to reveal:

• How to select customers with whom we spoke about something last month?
• How to select customers with whom we have not spoken for the last 6 months?
• How to avoid sending duplicate messages?

How to select customers with whom we spoke about something last month?

You know that in addition to standard filter most functions allow you to also filter by other parameters. You just need to press the Also Filter by ... button and select required parameters from the list, like this:

The list displayed will include all fields for Contact, such as Contact Type, Country, Email, Phone, and also a group of parameters starting with words has or hasNOT, like those highlighted above. These parameters allow you to filter contacts by their communications history. The program treats them as instructions to "select contacts who have ..." (whatever the parameter says), for example, "select contacts who have communication on that date", or "select contacts who have communication on that date on that subject".

The filter shown below will select customers to whom we mailed Special Offer 3 in Feb 2006:

If you don't specify "Has communication on that date" or don't include into filter the program will assume any date, so that the filter below will return contacts to whom we ever mailed Special Offer 3.

Similarly, if you don't include subject, the program will select contacts to whom we mailed in Feb 2006 about anything at all.

Field "Has communication of this type" allws you to filter communication by type. For example, if you wish to select who has enquired about Special Offer 3 at any time:

Field "Has communication of this status" allows you to filter those communication by status. Typical values are "TO DO" and "DONE", with "TO DO" indicating a reminder.

To select customers for whom you have an outstanding reminder in February, you can specify something like this:

You can also combine date, status and subject of communications, eg selecting customers with whom you needed to speak about Special Offer 3 in February 2006 but have not done so.

How is this different from simply listing reminders? This filter can be applied anywhere: in the search function, list function, in mail merge, in analysis and reporting.

How to select customers with whom we have not spoken for the last 6 months?

Just like there is a group of parameters that can select contacts by what and when you spoke to them about, there is another group that selects contact by communications that did not happen:

• Show me the customers to whom I have not spoken for the last 6 months?
• Have not spoken about "Special Offer 3"?
• Those who made no enquiries?
• Those to whom I never mailed?

These parameters' names start with hasNOT:

To select customers with whom we had no communications in the last 6 months, use parameter hasNOT_Com_Date - No communications in this date range:

To select people to whom we did not speak about Special Offer 3, use parameter hasNOT_Subject - No communications on this subject:

hasNOT_Com_Type can select customers to whom you did not mail or those who did not make enquiries and so on.

Just like "has..." parameters, "hasNOT..." can be combined to create more complex criteria, such as "People to whom we did not speak in the last 6 months about Special Offer 3" (but may have spoken about other things).

Also "has..." and "hasNOT..."s can be combined with other filters and with each other, so that you can ask questions like:

• People to whom we spoke about Special Offer 2 but not Special Offer 3
• People to whom we mailed Special Offer 3 but who never made an enquiry about it - ie never responded to our promotion

How to avoid sending duplicate messages?

Sometimes you cannot print letters or send emails to your client base in one go. You need to send some, take a break, then send some more. How to avoid sending messages to people to whom you already sent them? This is where "hasNOT..." parameters described above will help.

Simply Contacts Database (and all systems based on it) tracks all information it sends out on its database. When you print letters, a communication record is inserted into the database immediately after the letter is sent to a printer. When you email directly from the program, each email is tracked on the database immediately after it is sent. When you email via Outlook, each email is recorded after it is submitted to Outlook. Even if you cancel emails mid-way, you will still have a clear record of what has and hot been sent.

So in order to continue mailing your batch and avoid duplication, you will need to select contacts to whom you have not mailed today on this subject, like this:

This will select people from your database with whom you did not communicate about Special Offer 3 on 24-Mar, which is when this tutorials was written.