Recipients - Managing customer data > Import function for recipient data > Creating a new import profile > Handling with duplicates

Handling with duplicates

When importing new recipients, it is possible that some are already in the OpenEMM database. The database, however, should not contain a duplicate of a recipient, since that recipient would, for example, receive a newsletter twice. These ‘dead’ entries also falsify the evaluation of responses to marketing campaigns. The import system therefore checks for duplicate entries. As preset, the import function prevents duplicate e-mail addresses. In individual cases it may make sense to use other recipient profile fields to check for duplicates. You can control how the system carries this out through several selection lists.

Key-Column for Duplicate-Check and Updates: It is important to understand which criteria the system uses to classify an address as a duplicate. When sending e-mails, it makes sense to use the e-mail address as a criterion. That is also the standard setting. It is possible that a recipient registers with multiple e-mail addresses, but these kinds of double registration cannot be discovered automatically. This setting also applies to the updating of recipients profiles. The selection list contains all predefined and self-defined fields of the profile database. All selection criteria at a glance:

Key column

Meaning

creation_date

The date on which the recipient was entered into the database.

customer_id

OpenEMM automatically assigns a customer number for each newly created recipient. This ID is unique in the system; a specific recipient can be uniquely identified via the CUSTOMER_ID.

datasource_id

Code number of the data source from which the recipient data was imported When importing CSV data using the import function, OpenEMM automatically assigns an ID (see chapter "Import function for recipient data").

email

The e-mail address of the recipient.

firstname

The forename of the recipient.

gender

The gender of the recipient. OpenEMM uses numbers to mark the gender: 0 means male, 1 means female. The number 2 is used to designate all recipients who do not have a gender defined.

lastname

The last name of the recipient.

mailtype

The type of mail that the recipient wants. In the CSV file, 0, txt or text represents text, 1 or html represents HTML and 2 represents off-line HTML.

change_date

The last date on which the data for the recipient was changed in the database.

title

The recipient’s title, for example Dr..

Check for duplicate records: You use this selection list to decide how OpenEMM checks for duplicates.

With the option only within new data you only exclude the occurrence of duplicates in the data to be imported. For duplicates within the CSV file, the first entry is imported into the database. This ensures that new recipients are only imported once even if they are contained several times in the CSV file. This check is also contained in the complete duplicate comparison.
The complete setting checks two things: Firstly, whether a new recipient has already been entered into the database. Secondly, whether an entry occurs more than once within the new recipient. How recognized duplicates are handled depends on your selection under Mode (Chap. "Determining the process settings"). Add new recipients only ignores existing recipients, i.e. these are not updated with the data from the CSV file. An additional update of existing recipients takes place if you have selected the import mode Add new recipients and update existing recipients.
The no check setting: All recipients are imported. There is no check for duplicates within the import file. Equally, no check is made as to whether a recipient already exists in the database. This can lead to a recipient with one e-mail address being contained several times in the database.
Please note: The setting no check in combination with the mode Only update existing recipients leads to the import of no data.