Examples of using Packages for an Appeal

Lyn Cooke

I am looking for more information on using "packages" with an appeal. Any examples or success you have had would be appreciated.

Melissa Graves 2

Lyn Cooke:

I am looking for more information on using "packages" with an appeal. Any examples or success you have had would be appreciated.

We use appeals most often in two ways. With donor renewal mailings they are used to track segments we target and/or want to track. We tend to segment most by recency (current, LYBUNT, Lapsed, etc.) but we also sometimes segement by number of gifts (first time donor vs. multiple gifts).  With acquistion mailings, we use packages to track which list we are mailing so we can track list performance. We also use separate packages when we are mailing a control vs. test package.

Hope this is helpful.

PS - If you are attending BBCON I am teaching a session on Appeals - I will be covering this.

Billy Schultz

Lyn Cooke:

I am looking for more information on using "packages" with an appeal. Any examples or success you have had would be appreciated.

I have an appeal each year for our golf tournament, and use the packages to show how the money came in (sponsor, golfer, auction, dinner, etc.). It works well in querying on those specific revenue areas.

Melissa Graves 2

Billy Schultz:
I have an appeal each year for our golf tournament, and use the packages to show how the money came in (sponsor, golfer, auction, dinner, etc.). It works well in querying on those specific revenue areas.

I know that this is a common way people use appeals when they do events - but I need to say it is one of the ways I will advocate people NOT use packages in my session at BBCON.

Brenda Benson

Lyn Cooke:

I am looking for more information on using "packages" with an appeal. Any examples or success you have had would be appreciated.

I've worked places where we used packages as Melissa mentioned to indicate a "test" letter. It might be a completely different letter, or a variation of the same letter with more or less of a hard ask, or even an envelope with a tagline on it. I think you will want to make sure to code your reply device or return envelope so that the person doing the data entry can easily see the package and enter it on the gift record. Currently our mailing list is less than 4,000 people so I never really feel like our test results are statistically significant. Brenda Benson Development Associate Greenville Seminary

Shirley Dempsey

Lyn Cooke:

I am looking for more information on using "packages" with an appeal. Any examples or success you have had would be appreciated.

We don't use packages very often, but we do use them for our golf tournament.  We have an appeal package for when a save-the-date card was mailed and then for when the brochure is mailed. 

Shirley

Chris Pearce

I too would like more information on using "packages" with an appeal.  



I've gotten the impression that most people use packages to segment an appeal that goes out at one specific time.  We have several situations where we have several Appeals which are ongoing throughout the year.  Is there any downside to setting up packages to track specific solicitations that occur at different times, but are still really part of the same appeal?  For example, say we have a 2015-16 Young Alumni Appeal set up and we want to send an email to some of them in the spring; a letter to another subset in the summer; and yet another communication that goes to all of them in the fall. Could I use packages to track these three mailings or am I better off creating three distinct appeals?  



We've not used packages before so I'd appreciate any input from more experienced users!

Thanks!

 

Jen Claudy

I use Packages, usually, to indicate why someone ended up on the list.  So if they are on the list because they're a board member, that's the Package, then down a heirarchical list.  And my final Package for any Appeal is "Do Not Mail" for any records that were on the list per the criteria, but then excluded from the final list for some reason (which is noted in the Marketing Segment Field, since that one doesn't have a character limit on it).



For your example, Chris, I would think that one Appeal and multiple Packages will probably work for you. 



However, I recommend that you first set up a series of test records and develop whatever reporting you are going to want.  If this setup works with those reports, you should be fine.  If it doesn't, consider a series of Appeals that start with or contain the same word ("FY16 YA") to easily group them together.  You can also use Appeal Category and Appeal Type to some degree, again, depending on the reports you plan to use.  It is far easier, in my opinion, to change from one Appeal with multiple Packages to multiple Appeals than the other way around.



I might also suggest, if you need to ensure that no one receives more than one of these mailings (i.e. if someone gets the spring letter, they are then automatically excluded from the summer and fall letters), that you temporarily duplicate your data entry with an Attribute.  Attributes can be set to "Allow Only One" which means RE will not let you add the Attribute when pulling the summer list if the record already has the Attribute on it from the spring list.  Plus, Attributes are a heck of a lot easier to change with Global Change than Appeals are.  When the entire series is complete and your Appeal Tags are in place, then you can delete the Attribute from the system.  (Use a Global Change, and under Constituent Attributes you'll see your Attributes listed, as well as a Field option of "Attribute" this opens a dialog box to Add or Delete the Attribute from the records in the selected Query.)



Probably more information than you wanted, but that's my $0.02 (or maybe $0.04)...

Aldera Chisholm

We use packages exclusively with mailing appeals - so my mail appeal may be 2015 Fall Direct Mail, and my packages will be LYBUNT, New, Special, (etc, etc.) I have a standardized list of about 10 packages I choose from (not every one of the 10 will be used in each mailing) so that I can contrast the package year to year across Direct Mailings. 

Chris Pearce

Jennifer Claudy:

I use Packages, usually, to indicate why someone ended up on the list.  So if they are on the list because they're a board member, that's the Package, then down a heirarchical list.  And my final Package for any Appeal is "Do Not Mail" for any records that were on the list per the criteria, but then excluded from the final list for some reason (which is noted in the Marketing Segment Field, since that one doesn't have a character limit on it).



For your example, Chris, I would think that one Appeal and multiple Packages will probably work for you. 



However, I recommend that you first set up a series of test records and develop whatever reporting you are going to want.  If this setup works with those reports, you should be fine.  If it doesn't, consider a series of Appeals that start with or contain the same word ("FY16 YA") to easily group them together.  You can also use Appeal Category and Appeal Type to some degree, again, depending on the reports you plan to use.  It is far easier, in my opinion, to change from one Appeal with multiple Packages to multiple Appeals than the other way around.



I might also suggest, if you need to ensure that no one receives more than one of these mailings (i.e. if someone gets the spring letter, they are then automatically excluded from the summer and fall letters), that you temporarily duplicate your data entry with an Attribute.  Attributes can be set to "Allow Only One" which means RE will not let you add the Attribute when pulling the summer list if the record already has the Attribute on it from the spring list.  Plus, Attributes are a heck of a lot easier to change with Global Change than Appeals are.  When the entire series is complete and your Appeal Tags are in place, then you can delete the Attribute from the system.  (Use a Global Change, and under Constituent Attributes you'll see your Attributes listed, as well as a Field option of "Attribute" this opens a dialog box to Add or Delete the Attribute from the records in the selected Query.)



Probably more information than you wanted, but that's my $0.02 (or maybe $0.04)...

Thanks for your response.  Definitely worth a lot more than $0.04!   I like the distinction you made regarding packages being used to indicate why someone ended up on the list.  Good idea about setting up the reporting and testing in advance...going through that process will probably answer my question of whether we should use packages in this way.  Do you have any recommendations of articles or other resources to learn more about common uses of packages?  Bill Connors' book didn't go in tons of detail on the topic. thanks so much!

 

Chris Pearce

Aldera Chisholm:

We use packages exclusively with mailing appeals - so my mail appeal may be 2015 Fall Direct Mail, and my packages will be LYBUNT, New, Special, (etc, etc.) I have a standardized list of about 10 packages I choose from (not every one of the 10 will be used in each mailing) so that I can contrast the package year to year across Direct Mailings. 

That makes sense! Thank you for explaining. That's how I thought most organizations would use packages as it seems most straightforward...

Patti Hommes, bCRE-PRO

It looks like a lot of folks have this same response, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway

We use packages to further identify a mailing, since most of our constituencies get targeted letters.. So for the Annual Fund Mailing, packages are Trustee, Alumni, Parent, etc.

Chris Pearce

Thank you Patti!

Unknown

We also use Packages to track donor status/frequency (Donor, Lybunt, Sybunt, Non-Donor) and we've tried to leave room for multiple Packages of the same type in case we use test letters in the future. Our Packages are D1 (Donors), L1 (Lybunts), S1 (Sybunts), and N1 (Non-Donors). Future test letters for the same appeal would be, N1, N2, N3, D1, D2, etc...



If you look in Bill Connor's Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge, he discusses the three ways he sees Packages most commonly used on pg. 13.

Harmony Hallas

Patti Hommes:

It looks like a lot of folks have this same response, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway

We use packages to further identify a mailing, since most of our constituencies get targeted letters.. So for the Annual Fund Mailing, packages are Trustee, Alumni, Parent, etc.

Aloha All, 

We also use this method; I'm not a big fan of it though.

I find that I can not use the built it Appeal Reporting tools because we are using the packages as our breakdown of appeal category. We will be changing this next fiscal year. 

The way I envision the structure to be is: You're appealing to a specific constituency base (Alumni, Parents, Friends etc) and you are sending them a highly thought out package based on their envolvment or level with your organization (lybunt, sybunt, major etc).  

Hope this helps with your decision...



 

Beth Romano

we use packages on appeals to note if the gift is a flat, increase, decrease, refusals, new, skip gifts.  This makes reporting much easier, since I can group gifts by packages and give a breakdown by the above listed categories..

Bob Wiebe

We use packages in conjunction with segmented mailings. For example, we may wish to segement by mailing distinctive letters in a given appeal to the following: Patron Donors, President's Circle Donors, Under $1000, Young Alumni who don't fit the above, out of country donors.  Even if the same letter is used, identifying the package allows us to report on the success rate (# of donors and # of dollars) for each group within the overall appeal. This can, in turn, lead to an analysis of wheter it was worth contacting that segment.