Do you apply exclusions or suppressions to your scores?

No. From an analytical perspective we want to understand as much about a charity’s donors as possible. Exclusions or suppressions are basically assumptions about how a campaign is going to be conducted. But donors who may not appear relevant to the campaign you’re planning are still very valuable and have something to teach our models about donor behaviour. 

For that reason, we generate scores for everybody, whether or not they will be included in a campaign. In a direct mail appeal, for example, everyone in your CRM will receive a score, even if they have a Do Not Mail flag. For a regular giving reactivation campaign, every lapsed regular giver will get a score, even if they have been lapsed for many years. 

Experience has taught us that donors can behave in ways that traditional segmentation methods may not predict, so our analysis casts a wide net to give you the complete picture and ensure that your campaign doesn’t miss out on opportunities.

Of course it’s unlikely that you’ll contact everyone on your database for a campaign, so once you have your Dataro scores, you can then generate lists and apply your exclusions in the normal way. For example, in a direct mail appeal donors with a Do Not Mail flag will be excluded in the same way you  already exclude them, even if they have a high Dataro ranking.