Unique email tally for monthly billing

Debra King

Is it possible to find out the total monthly tally of unique emails that Blackbaud is using for billing costs for each e-blast?



It would be great to see this tally each time we send an e-blast so we can track our expenses.

Matthew Garbarino

Hi Debra. Yes, you can check your current status of both your usable email address count and your annual send limit anytime. Check the Account menu in the top right, then select Subscription information.

Debra King

Thank you Matt.



I found the Usable Email tally in OLX. Can you tell me how RE calculates this list? What are the criteria for considering an email usable?



Prior to the recent RE upgrade that moved all the emails from old address records into the Phone tab, our count was under 2,500. Is it possible that the upgrade moved emails into the phone tab and increased the count?



My contention is that not all of these emails are in fact usable unless RE knows something that I don't. Many of the emails that were stored in old address records are very likely not usable. How does RE calculate the Usable number? Is it based on the phone type, Inactive status, both, neither?



Also, if I mark emails as Inactive will RE stop counting them as usable?



I am in the process of cleaning up the emails after the upgrade and need to know how to mark old emails that we have no intention of sending eblasts to but may not necessarily delete for the sake of history.



Thank you,


Debra

Matthew Garbarino

Debra King:
Thank you Matt.



I found the Usable Email tally in OLX. Can you tell me how RE calculates this list? What are the criteria for considering an email usable?



Prior to the recent RE upgrade that moved all the emails from old address records into the Phone tab, our count was under 2,500. Is it possible that the upgrade moved emails into the phone tab and increased the count?



My contention is that not all of these emails are in fact usable unless RE knows something that I don't. Many of the emails that were stored in old address records are very likely not usable. How does RE calculate the Usable number? Is it based on the phone type, Inactive status, both, neither?



Also, if I mark emails as Inactive will RE stop counting them as usable?



I am in the process of cleaning up the emails after the upgrade and need to know how to mark old emails that we have no intention of sending eblasts to but may not necessarily delete for the sake of history.



Thank you,


Debra

Online Express considers an email address usable once it has been sent to and does not result in a hard bounce or an unsubscribe. The nice thing here is that any bad email address like you mentioned won't count against your limit, since hard bounces are not counted.



Online Express will only send to the email address you have mapped or marked as "primary" with the new RE update. Especially while you are in the process of cleaning up your mapped email types, pay special attention to the count of email addresses you are about to send to on the confirmation screen you see when you send a message.



We are actually working on supporting the new "Inactive" email address feature right now, and hope to have that available in the March 24th release. In the mean-time, I would recommend you map any old email types that you no longer wish to use with a special type as "historical email" or something along those lines, and of course do not set Online Express to send to this type.

Debra King

Debra King:
Thank you Matt.



I found the Usable Email tally in OLX. Can you tell me how RE calculates this list? What are the criteria for considering an email usable?



Prior to the recent RE upgrade that moved all the emails from old address records into the Phone tab, our count was under 2,500. Is it possible that the upgrade moved emails into the phone tab and increased the count?



My contention is that not all of these emails are in fact usable unless RE knows something that I don't. Many of the emails that were stored in old address records are very likely not usable. How does RE calculate the Usable number? Is it based on the phone type, Inactive status, both, neither?



Also, if I mark emails as Inactive will RE stop counting them as usable?



I am in the process of cleaning up the emails after the upgrade and need to know how to mark old emails that we have no intention of sending eblasts to but may not necessarily delete for the sake of history.



Thank you,


Debra

Thank you Matt,



This is very helpful.

Debra King

Hi Matt,



Another question:



Is there anyway that I can access the list of the what Blackbaud is calling Usable emails? I need to know more than just the number of usable emails.



Somehow Blackbaud is querying our database to ascertain the number. I would like to see that list so I can modify it if I need to.



Before the upgrade, our usable number of emails was under 2,500 and now it is 2,745. This has amounted to an increase in our monthly billing. I'd like to go through list myself to decide if they are Usable.



Make sense?



Thank you.

Matthew Garbarino

Debra King:
Hi Matt,



Another question:



Is there anyway that I can access the list of the what Blackbaud is calling Usable emails? I need to know more than just the number of usable emails.



Somehow Blackbaud is querying our database to ascertain the number. I would like to see that list so I can modify it if I need to.



Before the upgrade, our usable number of emails was under 2,500 and now it is 2,745. This has amounted to an increase in our monthly billing. I'd like to go through list myself to decide if they are Usable.



Make sense?



Thank you.

Hi Debra. There isn't a way to see the list of your usable email addresses. You can of course check the stats of any given message and see who received the message and what actions they took.



Online Express is not actively looking for usable email addresses in your database. The number only grows when you send email to new addresses. That means that you had sent one or more messages after the upgrade to new email addresses that did not result in a bounce or an unsubscribe.

Debra King

Hi Matt,



In theory, if I send all of the email data to RE after sending each blast, and then I query on the assigned appeals, shouldn't the query results show me the usable emails sent by OLX?