How to best manage a physical mailing list?

December 12, 2007 2:15 AM

How to manage an unwieldy mailing list (for physical mailing) on a Mac.

I use an opt-in mailing list that I use to send out promotional mailings from my business. This is a physical mailing list that I print labels from through Indesign. I have been maintaining these databases using the new Numbers software from Apple (because my both myself and my lovely Mac do not get along with Excel).

Every few weeks I am sent an updated master list that has new contacts added, and deletes out of date ones.

I am looking for some solution that can compare my local edited copy with the new master copy, and update my local copy as required.

Something mentioned in this thread would be useful, but I am not collaborating with another person per se, rather being provided an updated list every few weeks by a third party. (fyi, this is not spam)

If budget allowed, I would love to hire a Filemaker or Excel guru to build a custom thing for me, but I was wondering if anyone knew of any alternative software for Mac that could possibly perform this function or simply better manage this list?

posted by LongDrive to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I'm trying to understand why you maintain your own separate list rather than just use the master list. Are you saying that the master list is in Excel format and your local copy is in a different format (is it an InDesign document?)?
posted by daser at 7:26 AM on December 12, 2007

Yes, please explain what "edited local copy" means and why you don't simply use the updated master file to print your labels.
posted by gum at 9:56 AM on December 12, 2007

The master list is made up of about 12 separate lists, all of which are updated frequently. There are also too many names on each one to use them as masters, so I hand pick a hundred or so from each list to maintain my 'edited local copy'. Its when those 12 lists get updated that I need to compare them to the old 12 lists, as well as ensure that my master list does not contain any contacts that have been deleted.

I probably need an excel wizard to do this. What do you even call someone who I could hire to do this?
posted by LongDrive at 1:13 PM on December 12, 2007