Settings (Postal Code Response Rates)

Group Postal Codes Based On

This determines how records are grouped to calculate response rates. By default, the entire postal code is used, and all records with the same postal code are grouped together to calculate the group response rate. Alternatively, you can group records based on only a portion of the complete postal code, consisting of the first n digits or characters. For example, you might want to group records based on only the first 5 characters of a 10-character postal code or the first three digits of a 5-digit postal code. The output dataset will contain one record for each postal code group. If you enter a value, it must be a positive integer.

Numeric Postal Code Format

If the postal code field is numeric and you want to group postal codes based on the first n digits instead of the entire value, you need to specify the number of digits in the original value. The number of digits is the maximum possible number of digits in the postal code. For example, if the postal code field contains a mix of 5-digit and 9-digit zip codes, you should specify 9 as the number of digits.

Note: Depending on the display format, some 5-digit zip codes may appear to contain only 4 digits, but there is an implied leading zero.

Output

In addition to the new dataset that contains response rates by postal code, you can display a table and chart that summarize the results by decile rank (top 10%, top 20%, etc.). The table displays response rates, cumulative response rates, number of records, and cumulative number of records in each decile. The chart displays cumulative response rates and cumulative number of records in each decile.

Minimum Acceptable Response Rate. If you enter a target minimum response rate or break-even formula, the table will be color-coded to show which deciles meet the minimum cumulative response rate, and the chart will include a reference line at the specified minimum response rate value. See the topic Postal Code Response Rates for more information.

Target response rate. Response rate expressed as a percerntage (percentage of positive responses in each postal code group). The value must be greater than 0 and less than 100.
Calculate break-even rate from formula. Calculate minimum cumulative response rate based on the formula: (Cost of mailing a package/Net revenue per response) x 100. Both values must be positive numbers. The result should be a value greater than 0 and less than 100. For example, if the cost of mailing a package is $0.75 and the net revenue per response is $56, then the minimum response rate is: (0.75/56) x 100 = 1.34%.

Maximum Number of Contacts. If you specify a maximum number of contacts, the table will be color-coded to show which deciles do not exceed the cumulative maximum number of contacts (records) and the chart will include a reference line at that value.

Percentage of contacts. Maximum expressed as percentage. For example, you might want to know the deciles with the highest response rates that contain no more than 50% of all the contacts. The value must be greater than 0 and less than 100.
Number of contacts. Maximum expressed as a number of contacts. For example, if you don't intend to mail out more than 10,000 packages, you could set the value at 10000. The value must be a positive integer (with no grouping symbols).

If you specify both a minimum acceptable response rate and a maximum number of contacts, the color-coding of the table will be based on whichever condition is met first.

Export to Excel

This procedure automatically creates a new dataset that contains response rates by postal code. Each record (row) in the dataset represents a postal code. You can automatically save the same information in an Excel file. This file is saved in Excel 97-2003 format. The file contains:

Postal code. If postal code groups are based on only a portion of the complete value, then this is the value of that portion of the postal code. The header row label for this column in the Excel file is the name of the postal code field in the original dataset.
ResponseRate. The percentage of positive responses in each postal code.
Responses. The number of positive responses in each postal code.
Contacts. The total number of contacts in each postal code that contain a non-missing value for the response field.
Index. The "weighted" response based on the formula N x P x (1-P), where N is the number of contacts, and P is the response rate expressed as a proportion.
Rank. Decile rank (top 10%, top 20% , etc.) of the cumulative postal code response rates in descending order.