by Lucy Guerra 

Hey there, here's a little something you may not know about Address Coder.  For those of you using Tapestry segmentation to classify your customer or member lists, did you know that Address Coder allows you to create your own "master" grouping? That's right - you can group Tapestry segments together into your own groups.

Let's say you've geocoded and Tapestry appended customer lists and learned over time that your best, most profitable customers come from two segments:  6 - Sophisticated Squires and 12 - Up and Coming Families.  And that you always seem to have a lot of customers in segment 17 - Green Acres, even though they tend not to be the most profitable customers.  With Address Coder, you can create your own "master" groups to be displayed on the first page of the Tapestry Profile Report: ‘My Best Customers' - all the customer records in 6 - Sophisticated Squires and 12 - Up and Coming Families and ‘My Potential Customers' - all the records in 17 - Green Acres.

To do this, go to the Summary Group Editor found under the File menu.

Then click ‘Add New' to create a new grouping. (Here it's named My Summary Group.) ‘Create' collections for each group: My Best Customers and My Potential Customers.

Now when you setup a new geocoding, data appending, and report job, you'll be able to choose the new grouping from the Report Options tab:

In this way, you've made it easy to get a quick snapshot of any future customer lists: how many fall into your best, most profitable customer group, and how many fall into your potential customer group.

Like the 12 LifeMode groups, which reflect lifestyles/life stages, and the 11 Urbanization groups, which show levels of affluence and population density, your own custom Tapestry group gives you another way to look at the big picture of your customers or members.

For more information about Address Coder, please visit: www.esri.com/coder.