Why Springbaud Matches RE Records On Email Address

Introduction

We get a lot of questions as to why Springbaud uses email addresses to identify Raiser's Edge records when adding campaign results, rather than using something more explicit, and perhaps more obvious, such as Constituent ID or System Record ID.

Using the email address means that constituents sharing an email address will have campaign results added to their record even if they were not explicitly uploaded to an Email Service Provider (ESP) list. On the face of it, this may seem like a less-than-ideal situation.

But on closer examination, there are a lot of advantages to this approach, which we'll look at below.

Sole Indentifier

The reason for using email address over Constituent ID, for example, is primarily that ESPs – universally as far as we are aware – retain only email addresses as recipient identifiers ("primary keys") in campaign results, quite apart from the information contained in subscriber lists.

At this point, the difference between campaign result information and subscriber list information should be clarified.

Campaign result information is usually divided into two parts: Campaign level and Recipient level. Campaign-level information generally comprises the name of the campaign, the date it was sent, the number of subscribers it was sent to, the subscriber list – or lists – that were used as a recipient source, etc. Recipient-level information includes the email address the campaign was sent to, the exact time it was sent, whether it bounced, whether the recipient opened the email, clicked on an embedded link, etc.

Subscriber list information is also usually divided into two parts: List level and Subscriber level. List-level information often comprises the name of the list, the date it was created, the number of subscribers it contains, etc. Subscriber-level information always includes the email address plus whatever other mandatory fields the ESP requires (if any; for example, Mailchimp requires none, Campaign Monitor requires Name) and any custom fields which may have been included, such as Constituent ID, Date of Birth or Salutation.

Campaign information generally does not include information contained in a subscriber list other than the email address. And, obviously, list information is only available as long as the list exists and the subscriber information in the list has not been altered or removed. Most importantly, if a list is deleted these details are lost; they are not available from the campaign result information.

Identifier Availability and Uniqueness

So, in summary, the information in an ESP subscriber list can't be depended upon to identify Raiser's Edge constituents when adding campaign results simply because if the list is deleted, then the record key – Constituent ID, for example – is lost and there is no longer any way to identify the specific Raiser's Edge constituent record.

Further, most ESPs impose account-wide primary key status on email addresses. This means that a given email address can only appear once in a single list, and often in any list in an account. So the information associated with an email address is as unique as the email address itself and there cannot be more than one subscriber with a given email address.

Examples

As an example, if email address jcitizen@somewhere.com exists in a list, then the information associated with that email address – such as Name, Date Of Birth, Constituent ID, etc – is unique. That is, uploading different details for this email address will overwrite the existing information, so "John" can become "Jane", "12345" can become "67890", etc. The same goes if a subscriber changes their own details – or their email address – via their ESP account. (In the latter case, the link between the list information and the campaign result information will be completely broken and campaign results can no longer be matched to a Raiser's Edge record.)

The impact of all of this is quite serious: Suppose that subscriber jcitizen@somewhere.com / John Citizen / 12345 is uploaded to a list, a campaign is sent using that list and results are retrieved. A campaign result will be added to the Raiser's Edge record with Constituent ID "12345". Suppose then that, subsequently, subscriber jcitizen@somewhere.com / Jane Citizen / 67890 is uploaded (to the same, or even a different list) and then updated results for the campaign are retrieved. The updated campaign result will be applied to the Raiser's Edge record with Constituent ID "67890", as these details will have overwritten the previous information for the email address. And so on, with, say Joan Citizen / 34567, Jeff Citizen / 12390, etc. To my knowledge, it is impossible to resolve this ambiguity unless the ESP was to permanently retain a designated additional key (being Constituent ID in this case) in the campaign results. To date, this hasn't happened.

Spam Laws and Determinism

Another aspect of this issue is that, even if multiple subscribers could be uploaded with the same email address, for example, jcitizen@somewhere.com / John Citizen / 12345 and jcitizen@somewhere.com / Jane Citizen / 67890, according to the spam laws in most countries, for any given email campaign only a single email will be sent to email address jcitizen@somewhere.com. Which recipient is selected? John or Jane? Is it deterministic (that is, predictable) which record will be used? Or is the selection random? And which record of the two should receive the campaign result? Or should both records have a result added as, to all intents and purposes, both recipients were sent the email?

This last point – the "to all intents and purposes" argument – contributes greatly to our decision to adopt email address as the only primary key that can be depended upon when adding campaign results to Raiser's Edge records:

1. It is available for as long as campaign result information is available.
2. It is unaffected by list deletion.
3. It is unaffected by the overwriting of subscriber list information.
4. It is unaffected by the random selection of one of multiple subscribers with the same email address due to anti-spam restrictions.
5. It results in all records which share an email address receiving campaign results on the basis that, to all intents and purposes, all constituents sharing that email address were sent the email.

Summary

The truth is that, in an ideal world where we could be sure that a designated primary key such as Constituent ID or System Record ID would always be available from a campaign's results, we would use it and life would be much easier all round. But the fact is that ESPs guarantee only that an email address will be available to identify a campaign recipient. So this is all we can depend on when matching Raiser's Edge records.

We would welcome any thoughts or questions you have about this topic. It's a complex issue and one that should be fully understood when deploying a campaign management tool such as Springbaud.

Thank you for reading. (This article was originally published in a slightly different form as a conversation in the Springbaud LinkedIn Group.)

Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions (April, 2017)

PS Springbaud has an option to match recipients based on either Preferred/Primary email address only, or on any email address. This can be used to narrow the range of records to which campaign results are added where email addresses are shared.