Mail merge aggregation (print-ready mailing export)

Mail merge aggregation produces a print-ready mailing file from a list, designed for physical mail-outs and print campaigns. It groups contacts into individuals, households or families, formats names and salutations, and picks the best available address for each recipient based on the priority you set — giving you a file you can hand to a printer, fulfilment house or postal service.

Unlike the individual and bulk Documents flows (which produce a Word file or a combined PDF), mail merge aggregation produces a CSV file of formatted recipients, one row per mailing item. You start it from the Actions step of the List Builder, in the same Mail merge & document group as Bulk generate documents — see List actions in List Builder.

What you can do

• Group contacts as individuals, households or families, so couples and families receive a single, correctly addressed item.
• Split families or couples where the age difference between them is greater than a number of years you choose.
• Set how salutations and address names are written.
• Choose which address types are acceptable and put them in priority order, with automatic fallback to the next type.
• Get Australia Post sorting and barcode data where available.

Before you start

• Build the list of contacts you want to mail in the List Builder (open or create it from the Lists landing page), as you would for any other action.
• Decide how you want recipients grouped and which address types are acceptable for this mail-out.

Create a mail merge aggregation export — step by step

1. Open the list from the Lists landing page. It opens in the List Builder.
2. Go to step 4, Actions. The page tells you how many records the list includes.
3. Under Mail merge & document, select Mail merge aggregation. A Mail merge aggregation panel opens with two steps, Letter formatting and Preview.
4. Under Tag campaign, enter a Name for this mail-out.
5. Set the Grouping, Salutation, Address name and Set address priority options described below. At least one address type must be ticked — otherwise the panel shows Please select at least one address type.
6. Select Next. The Preview step shows the Salutation, Address name and address lines for the first few records, using your selections, so you can check them before exporting. Use Back to change anything.
7. Select Save & Export.
8. The file is prepared in the background. Open Manage exports from your profile menu at the top right, where the run appears as a Mail Merge export. Once its status is Completed, select Download.

If one of your teams has a limit on mail merge exports and the list is over it, the export waits for an administrator to approve it first — see Export limits & approvals.

Contacts with a restriction are left out

Anyone on the list with a permanent contact restriction, an active temporary or campaign-period restriction, or a Direct mail channel restriction (set globally or in the current circle) is left out of the mail merge, whether or not the list's conditions exclude them. Expired temporary restrictions and restrictions on other channels do not exclude anyone. The check runs before the Preview step, before household and family grouping and before the file is produced, so the records you see in the preview and the count in the export already exclude restricted people. A person who shares an address with a restricted person is still included. If nobody eligible is left, the export stops with an error rather than producing an empty file. See Campaign periods & contact restrictions.

Grouping

• Aggregation type — Individual, Household or Family. Household is selected to begin with.
• Max surnames to include if multiple — how many surnames to show when a group contains people with different surnames.
• Split families if age difference in years, is greater than — tick it and enter a number of years to split a family into separate items when the age gap is larger than that.
• Split couples if age difference in years, is greater than — the same, for couples.

Salutation

• Salutation format — First and last, First and middle, First middle last, First name, Initial, Initial last or Custom text.
• Override salutation (single) and Override salutation (plural) — a fixed greeting to use instead, for example Resident and Residents.
• Style between names — how two names are joined: &, and or comma.
• Known as — whether a person's known-as name is used: Do not replace, Replace first name or Replace first and last.
• Title — Always include, Do not include or Only include over age.

Address name

How the name on the address block is written:

• Address name format — First and last, First middle last, Initial last or Custom text.
• Style between names — &, and or comma.
• Title — Always include, Do not include or Only include over age.

Set address priority

The panel lists your account's address types — for example Street Address and Postal Address; each account configures its own.

• Tick the address types that are acceptable for this mail-out.
• Drag them into priority order, top to bottom.
• SwiftFox uses the top ticked address for each recipient first, then falls back to the next ticked type if that one isn't available, continuing until it finds an address or runs out.

What the file contains

The CSV has one row per mailing item, with these columns:

• Salutation and AddressName — the greeting and address name, formatted as you chose.
• AddressLine1, AddressLine2, AddressLine3 and State — the selected address.
• TargetAreas — the names of the target areas linked to the item, separated by commas.
• PreSort, SortPlan and Barcode — Australia Post sorting and barcode data, where available.
• NumPeople and SourceIds — how many contacts were combined into the item, and their SwiftFox record IDs.
• FirstName, LastName and OtherNames.
• Age, DateOfBirth and Gender — the recipient's demographics, subject to the rules below.
• OddEvenOrder — a walking-order sort value, described below.

Age, DateOfBirth and Gender

These three columns follow your account's profile field settings, so the file can be missing them entirely:

• DateOfBirth is written as a date in the form YYYY-MM-DD, for example 1990-09-16. Age is worked out from it against today's date in your account's time zone, so the same list exported on two different days can show a different age.
• If the date of birth profile field is hidden in your account, both Age and DateOfBirth are left out of the file — not blanked, but absent, so the columns do not appear at all. If the gender profile field is hidden, Gender is left out in the same way. Where no profile field visibility is configured, all three are included. See Profile fields (showing & ordering built-in fields).
• The three columns are only filled in for an item that represents one person. Where you have grouped contacts as a Household or a Family and more than one person has been combined into the row, all three are left blank, because the row has no single age, date of birth or gender to report. Check NumPeople to tell the two cases apart.
• A recipient with no date of birth or no gender recorded gets a blank value in that column.

OddEvenOrder

OddEvenOrder is a sort value worked out from each address's unit and street number. Sorting the file by it puts a run of addresses into the order someone would walk them — down the odd-numbered side of a street, then back along the even-numbered side — which is useful when a mail-out is being hand-delivered rather than posted. Addresses SwiftFox cannot place in that order are given a value of -1.

Tips

• Group by Household or Family to combine couples and families into a single item and avoid sending duplicates to the same address.
• Set a sensible address priority so contacts without your preferred address type still receive mail at the next-best address.
• Check the Preview step before exporting, and review the list's Results step first so the mail-out reaches exactly the right recipients.