Address-based householding¶
A household is a group of people who share a physical address and possibly other attributes. For example: a shared device or network, a shared last name, a shared phone number. Householding is a process that identifies a unique household in a data set.
Address-based householding is a process that standardizes addresses, pairs them with a last name, and then assigns that pair a Household ID.
A Household ID is a universally unique identifier (UUID) that uniquely identifies the combination of a standardized address and a last name.
Note
This topic describes address-based householding as a starting point. An implementation of address-based householding can vary significantly across brand use cases, depending on the
Type and number of data sources
Number of addresses
Types of direct mail campaigns that will be based on the results
How it works¶
Address-based householding is built upon the results of the Merged Customers table. This enables address-based householding the ability to use the results of individual identity resolution that was performed by Amperity (and built into the Merged Customers table). Apply the results of address-based householding to campaigns that rely on physical addresses, such as direct mail campaigns, to ensure that a single household gets a single piece of direct mail, even when multiple unique individuals reside within the same household.
Tip
Address-based householding can be improved when used alongside standardization provided by national change of address (NCOA) and coding accuracy support system (CASS).
National Change of Address (NCOA) is a secure dataset of approximately 160 million permanent change-of-address (COA) records consisting of the names and addresses of individuals, families, and businesses who have filed a change-of-address with the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Coding accuracy support system (CASS) is an address standardization concept that helps clean address to make them more effective for direct mail campaigns.
The process for enabling address-based householding includes:
Reviewing the Merged Customers table to identify any tenant-specific behaviors within the table that may need to be considered when extending Amperity for address-based householding.
Reviewing the bad-values blocklist to identify any tenant-specific behaviors within the blocklist workflow and to identify the name of the domain table associated with the bad-values blocklist feed.
Adding a Merged Households table to the customer 360 database
Building segments that use the Household ID, which is a UUID that is available to segments from the Merged Households table.
Sending segment results to any downstream process.
Tip
Additional configuration options for address-based householding include:
Joining the Merged Households table to the Customer 360 table to add the household_id and household_size fields. This makes them available as profile attributes.
Using a common table expression (CTE) to flag a single individual that is associated with an address as the primary contact.
Adding a Household 360 table. This is similar to the Customer 360 table and can merge values down to a single row per Household ID. This enables the use of summary attributes, such as identifying household lifetime value.
Add the data asset¶
Address standardization starts as a feed that loads a CSV file that contains a list of address variations for state and street names.
To add the address standardization data asset
Add the address standardization data asset to your tenant by pulling the file that is available from Amperity Data Assets, which is the name of an Amazon S3 bucket that can be made available to your tenant. Follow the steps for adding a data source and feed. Click Browse and select the “address_standardization_conversion.csv” file from the Amperity Data Assets Amazon S3 bucket. This file is located in the “householding” directory in the bucket.
Use all three fields – before, convert, and type as the primary key.
Note
If Amperity data assets credentials are not available on your tenant, make a request to Amperity Support to enable Amperity data assets for your tenant.
Add a passthrough table to your customer 360 database named LookupTables AddressStandardization, and then run your customer 360 database to build the LookupTables AddressStandardization table.
Important
The LookupTables AddressStandardization table is used within the Merged Households SQL template in a series of LEFT JOIN operations that are used to standardize addresses. For example:
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a7clean ON (a7clean.before = core.a7)
You can name this table anything else, such as Address Standardization USA. If you use the Merged Households SQL template, you will need to update the LEFT JOIN sections within that template to contain the updated table name.
Add Merged_Households table¶
The Merged Households table is a data table that must be added to a customer 360 database to support address-based householding. The purpose of the Merged Households table is to apply address-based householding and address standardization to the output of the Merged Customers table. The contents of this table contain the Household ID and can be used to improve the results of certain campaign types, such as direct mail.
This section walks through the default SQL template that is used to define how address-based householding works in Amperity.
From the Customer 360 tab, under All Databases, select the menu for the customer 360 database, and then click Edit.
Click Add Table. Name the table “Merged_Households”.
Set Build Mode to “SQL”, and then define a SQL query.
Tip
You may download a copy of Merged Households as a template or you may refer to the example at the end of this topic.
Important
Amperity uses a single table in the customer 360 database to collect rows from the Unified Coalesced table, and then collapses them into a single row per Amperity ID. This is referred to as the Merged Customers table. Prior to August 1, 2020 the name of this table was Unified Merged. Verify the name of this table as it is used for your tenant, and then update the template described in this topic so that it matches the name of the table in your tenant.
The section titled “Basic address standardization” is a common table expression (CTE) that performs address standardization. This process removes non-alphanumeric characters, trims for leading, trailing, and repeating whitespace, converts characters to uppercase, converts all valid names of states in the United States to their two-character representation, converts all postal codes to five digits, and converts common representations of street addresses into standardized variants.
Physical street addresses (as identified by the address field) are standardized by splitting on spaces. Each of the second, third, fourth, etc. elements of an address are compared to a lookup table. When matches are found, they are replaced with standardized values.
The section titled “Build the Household ID …” builds a universally unique identifier (UUID) from unique combinations of the address and surname fields.
The section titled “Get count of Amperity ID per Household ID” associates a count of Amperity IDs to each Household ID.
Tip
This section is where additional SQL is added to handle custom statistics on a per-household basis and to support other tenant-specific use cases. The default behavior only associates the Amperity ID to the Household ID, but can be tailored to support most use cases.
For example, you could add support for checking the number of Amperity IDs associated with a household, and if that exceeds a threshold, that address could be flagged as a business address (or some other non-household entity).
The section titled “Create flag for addresses in bad-values blocklist” identifies if addresses have been added to the bad-values blocklist.
If you are using the bad-values blocklist, uncomment the following sections.
The blv_address block (lines 209 - 220):
blv_addresses AS ( SELECT amperity_id, CASE WHEN (blv.value IS NOT NULL) THEN TRUE ELSE FALSE END AS blv_address FROM clean_addresses AS AD LEFT JOIN Blocklist_Values AS BLV ON AD.address = UPPER(BLV.value) )
where Blocklist_Values must be updated to be identical to the name of the domain table that is created by the bad-values blocklist feed.
Tip
The blv_addresses block may cause duplicate rows. Use SELECT DISTINCT if you run into issues with duplicate rows.
Caution
When uncommenting the blv_addresses block, be sure to add a comma after the closing parentheses (“)”) in the household_stats block or you will get a validation error.
The blv_address line in the last SELECT statement (line 230):
,BL.blv_address
The LEFT JOIN for blv_addresses (lines 248-249):
LEFT JOIN blv_addresses AS BL ON CONCAT_WS(' ',AD.address,AD.address2) = UPPER(BLV.value)
The section titled “Build Merged_Households table” combines everything into the Merged Households table.
Tip
Extend this section to support additional use cases, such as for specific household-level statistics or to add filter criteria that checks for BL.amperity_id IS NULL or for ST.amperity_id IS NULL.
Click Validate to verify that the SQL query runs correctly.
Make the table available to the visual Segment Editor by checking the box in the Show in VSE? column.
Note
The Merged Households table contains the Amperity ID and should be made available to the Visual Segment Editor.
Click Activate to update the customer 360 database with your changes, and then run the customer 360 database to update the Merged Households table.
Build queries and segments¶
The default Merged Households table (as described in this topic) makes available two new columns for segmentation: household_id (the address-based Household ID) and household_size (the number of unique individuals who share the same physical address).
As a SELECT statement, the Merged Household table is similar to:
SELECT
amperity_id AS "amperity_id"
,household_id AS "household_id"
,household_size AS "household_size"
,full_address AS "full_address"
,given_name AS "given_name"
,surname AS "surname"
,address AS "address"
,address2 AS "address2"
,city AS "city"
,state AS "state"
,postal AS "postal"
FROM
Merged_Households
Merged Households template¶
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Merged_Households query --
-- --
-- This query generates a UUID household_id for records with an exact --
-- match on full_address and surname. It uses Merged_Customers as a --
-- foundation, which means that householding occurs AFTER the best --
-- address has been selected, after which business rules are applied --
-- to define what qualifies as a household. --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
WITH
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Basic address standardization --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
clean_addresses AS (
SELECT
core.*
,REGEXP_REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
CONCAT_WS(' ', core.a1,
COALESCE(a2clean.converted, core.a2),
COALESCE(a3clean.converted, core.a3),
COALESCE(a4clean.converted, core.a4),
COALESCE(a5clean.converted, core.a5),
core.a6,
core.a7,
address2,
city,
COALESCE(stateclean.converted, core.state),
postal)
,' APT')
,' STE')
,' UNIT')
,' RM')
,' SPACE')
,' APARTMENT')
,' SUITE')
,' ROOM')
,' +'
,''
)
AS full_address
FROM (
SELECT
amperity_id
,UPPER(given_name) AS given_name
,UPPER(COALESCE(surname, REVERSE(SPLIT(full_name,' '))[0])) AS surname
,UPPER(address) AS address
,REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(address2),'[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\.]', '') AS address2
,UPPER(city) AS city
,TRIM(UPPER(state)) AS state
,UPPER(SUBSTR(postal,1,5)) AS postal
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 1 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[0]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a1
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 2 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[1]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a2
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 3 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[2]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a3
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 4 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[3]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a4
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 5 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[4]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a5
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 6 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[5]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a6
,CASE
WHEN NOT SIZE(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')) >= 7 THEN ''
ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(UPPER(SPLIT(REGEXP_REPLACE(address,' {2,}',' '), ' ')[6]), '[.,\\/#!$%\\^&\\*;:{}=\\-_~()\\. ]', '')
END AS a7
FROM
Merged_Customers
WHERE address IS NOT NULL
AND city IS NOT NULL
AND state IS NOT NULL
AND postal IS NOT NULL
AND COALESCE(surname, REVERSE(SPLIT(full_name,' '))[0]) IS NOT NULL
) AS core
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a1clean ON (a1clean.before = core.a1)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a2clean ON (a2clean.before = core.a2)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a3clean ON (a3clean.before = core.a3)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a4clean ON (a4clean.before = core.a4)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a5clean ON (a5clean.before = core.a5)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a6clean ON (a6clean.before = core.a6)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STREET'
) AS a7clean ON (a7clean.before = core.a7)
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
UPPER(before) AS before
,UPPER(convert) AS converted
FROM LookupTables_AddressStandardization
WHERE type = 'STATE'
) AS stateclean ON (stateclean.before = core.state)
),
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Build the Household ID from full_address + surname as a UUID --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
uuid_ids AS (
SELECT
amperity_id
,CONCAT_WS(
'-'
,substr(household_id, 1, 8)
,substr(household_id, 9, 4)
,substr(household_id, 13, 4)
,substr(household_id, 17, 4)
,substr(household_id, 21, 12)) AS household_id
FROM (
SELECT
amperity_id
,SHA(CONCAT(full_address, surname)) AS household_id
FROM
clean_addresses
)
),
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Get count of Amperity ID per Household ID --
-- For use with downstream filters --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
household_stats AS (
SELECT
household_id
,COUNT(DISTINCT amperity_id) AS amperity_id_count
FROM uuid_ids
WHERE household_id IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY 1
),
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Create flag for addresses in bad-values blocklist --
-- Blocklist_Values is the name of a domain table; verify then update --
-- For use with downstream filters --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
blv_addresses AS (
SELECT
amperity_id,
CASE
WHEN (blv.value IS NOT NULL)
THEN TRUE
ELSE FALSE
END AS blv_address
FROM clean_addresses AS AD
LEFT JOIN Blocklist_Values AS BLV
ON CONCAT_WS(' ',AD.address,AD.address2) = UPPER(BLV.value)
)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Build Merged_Households table --
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
SELECT distinct
AD.amperity_id
,ID.household_id
,ST.amperity_id_count AS household_size
,BL.blv_address
,AD.full_address
,AD.given_name
,AD.surname
,AD.address
,AD.address2
,AD.city
,AD.state
,AD.postal
FROM clean_addresses AS AD
LEFT JOIN uuid_ids AS ID
ON AD.amperity_id = ID.amperity_id
LEFT JOIN household_stats AS ST
ON ID.household_id = ST.household_id
LEFT JOIN blv_addresses AS BL
ON AD.amperity_id = BL.amperity_id