Using appeal's marketing source code and gift record's source code

Joanne Danganan

My organization has never used the field Marketing Source Code in either the constituent's Appeals tab or in Gift records. Also, before September 2014, we never had an involved direct mail program that utilized complicated segmenting. Now that we do, the Marketing Source Code seems like a helpful field to use to track which constituents received with direct mail package and to track the packages' success. Is it possible to enter the DM source code into the Marketing Source Code field in the constituent's Appeal tab that will then automatically transfer to the constituent's Gift record if s/he makes a donation through the DM piece? There are times, for example, when a donor may give to the DM piece through a designated online form where we wouldn't know which package they received unless we go back to their Constituent record and reference the original source code. Using the Marketing Source Code in the Appeals tab will help us track that but I see that it doesn't automatically populate the source code in the corresponding Gift record. Any workaround for this? I appreciate any insight you may have about how to track this information. Otherwise, if there's not way to automatically populate the existing Marketing Source Code into the corresponding gift, then I will just have to export my report to include both the Gift information and the Constituent Appeal information.

Jana Gay 2

Joanne Danganan:
My organization has never used the field Marketing Source Code in either the constituent's Appeals tab or in Gift records. Also, before September 2014, we never had an involved direct mail program that utilized complicated segmenting. Now that we do, the Marketing Source Code seems like a helpful field to use to track which constituents received with direct mail package and to track the packages' success. Is it possible to enter the DM source code into the Marketing Source Code field in the constituent's Appeal tab that will then automatically transfer to the constituent's Gift record if s/he makes a donation through the DM piece? There are times, for example, when a donor may give to the DM piece through a designated online form where we wouldn't know which package they received unless we go back to their Constituent record and reference the original source code. Using the Marketing Source Code in the Appeals tab will help us track that but I see that it doesn't automatically populate the source code in the corresponding Gift record. Any workaround for this? I appreciate any insight you may have about how to track this information. Otherwise, if there's not way to automatically populate the existing Marketing Source Code into the corresponding gift, then I will just have to export my report to include both the Gift information and the Constituent Appeal information.

You'd probably be better off using the appeal packages to segment your appeals, when you assign the package with the appeal, the gift get tracked back to both the appeal and the proper package. 

Joanne Danganan

Jana Gay:

You'd probably be better off using the appeal packages to segment your appeals, when you assign the package with the appeal, the gift get tracked back to both the appeal and the proper package. 

Thank you for your advice, Jana. However, one URL is assigned to each of our 3 appeals which means multiple packages are using the same URL. When a direct mail recipient decides to give online, it's important for results reporting to know exactly which DM package they received. In this instance, the package would be the URL they used and the appeal is the segment (acquisition, lapsed, or renewal). This leaves the DM package code somewhere to be filled in... Again, I'm happy to use the Marketing Segment Code in the Appeals tab even if it isn't an automatically populated field in the corresponding gift.