Every patron represents a vital connection to your mission. Yet, far too often, the power of these connections is diluted by a silent, insidious problem: duplicate user records in your CRM.
Traditional CRM systems notoriously struggle with duplicate (dupe) user data. Admins spend countless hours merging records, untangling messy histories, and battling inaccurate reports. This isn’t just an administrative headache; it’s a direct drain on resources that could be funding programs, engaging audiences, and driving your mission forward.
The Cost Of Dupe Clutter
- Staff Frustration & Burnout: Endless, manual cleanup. Oppressive data debt. Can you blame arts admins for simply giving up, knowing new duplicates are always coming? Your team loses confidence in the data and starts cutting corners or avoiding the system entirely.
- Wasted Time and Money: Every hour spent merging “John Smith” records is an hour not spent cultivating donors or selling tickets.
- Reports you can’t trust: If your data is riddled with dupes, you’re left with making misguided decisions and missing out on key opportunities.
Why Most CRMs Fail At This
Traditional systems treat duplicates like a cleanup problem. They give you tools to find and merge after the damage is done. That’s backwards.
The right approach? Stop duplicates before they start.
Why The Primary Email Is A Game-Changer
A system built for data integrity prevents duplicates from the start. This is the correct approach. At UpStage, for example, we’ve taken a unique approach to this fundamental design principle. Our core strategy: the primary email is the single, unique identifier for every constituent.
The primary email is ideal because:
It’s Nearly Universal: It’s what every major platform like Google, Apple, and Amazon require, so your patrons are provided with a familiar experience.
- It’s Highly Stable: Like a digital fingerprint, there’s only one primary email for any given person at a time, making it an incredibly effective unique identifier.
- It Prevents Duplicates Proactively: When a new record is being created, the system checks if that primary email already exists. If it does, you’re prompted to update the existing record, not create a new one. This simple, yet powerful, mechanism drastically reduces the influx of duplicates.
“But what about people without an email?”
“How can we be expected to exclude users without an email, Isn’t that a massive blind spot?!?”
That’s an entirely valid concern.
Google, Apple, and Amazon force users to have an email account but that just doesn’t fly for nonprofit arts and culture.
This is why we developed a proprietary solution for handling patrons without a primary email. It ensures the primary email as unique identifier isn’t a limitation. No one is overlooked. No one is excluded.
The solution is simple, 100% effective and provides a way to add a working email address later if needed.
Free Yourself of Dupes
By choosing a CRM built for this level of data integrity, you don’t just win the dupe battle, you avoid it.
Instead, you gain accurate insights, build stronger relationships, and your team’s invaluable time shifts to your core mission.
