When you send your customer lists to Plumb, you sense that there’s some magician who cleans up the data, makes it post office-compliant and ensures that all your clients receive your recent fabulous promotion or news. You are correct, and that wizard (we call him a Data Analyst/Digital Print Coordinator) is Gary Trujillo.

Gary, who loves good craft beer and hates heights, was with Direct Mail for 20 years before the February merge with Plumb Marketing. His job is to make sure your data is clean, get the best postal discounts, output the files for data printers and certify that your marketing materials get to where they need to go.

  • Unofficial job: Coffee-making First Responder.
  • Dream job: Professional Golfer.
  • Afterhours job: Dart Player. (“Yes, we drink beers and throw sharp objects at the wall.”)

Customer Data Quick Tips:

  • Include headers that explain what’s in the columns
  • Separate and enter first and last names in two separate column
  • Send only information we need
  • Delete highly sensitive data such as social security numbers before you send it to us

Excel Ninja Tip:

We always de-dupe customer data for you, but if you ever wanted to know how to do it, here you go. Because you are permanently deleting data, it’s a good idea to copy the original range of cells or table to another worksheet or workbook before removing duplicate values.

Filter for unique values

  1. Select the range of cells, or make sure the active cell is in a table.
  2. On the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group, click Advanced/Data Tab
  3. In the Advanced Filter dialog box, do one of the following:
    1. To filter the range of cells or table in place, click Filter the list, in-place.
    2. To copy the results of the filter to another location, do the following:
      1. Click Copy to another location.
      2. In the Copy to box, enter a cell reference.

Alternatively, click Collapse Dialog to temporarily hide the dialog box, select a cell on the worksheet, and then press Expand Dialog .

  1. Select the Unique records only check box, and click OK.
    1. The unique values from the selected range are copied to the new location.