Automatic Electronic Birthday Card

Jesse Hall

Has anyone created a system (or does NetCommunity have a tool) that automatically sends a "Happy Birthday" email to all constiuents each month who have a birthday for that given month?



If so, what is your process?



Thank you.

Chris Martin

Glad to help Jesse. Let us know if there's anything else we can do.

Terri Brewer

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Thanks Sarah. I am not sure what she meant by the audit query to add the attribute to people who gets a birthdate added later...how does that work?

Sarah Towle

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

This is Sarah Towle and I work with Gina Stewart. We are using NetCommunity Grow to send the birthday emails. Build your TEMPLATE (not a message) that you want sent out, then follow the procedures under Email > Scheduled Email. We currently send two different emails - one with an formal addressee and an informal addressee.

Terri Brewer

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Gina, what is your query pulled into? What are you using to send the emails, NetCommunity? We are trying to get this working as well.

Wendy tmp

Wendy tmp:
It would be great to be able to set up a query for birthdays, so I can easily send an automated electronic birthday card on a daily basis. At the moment the only quick way around this is to create a birthday attribute for all of our members. I would prefer it is there was no manual intervention.

Please note, I am not interested in monthly emails, only daily.

Wendy tmp

It would be great to be able to set up a query for birthdays, so I can easily send an automated electronic birthday card on a daily basis. At the moment the only quick way around this is to create a birthday attribute for all of our members. I would prefer it is there was no manual intervention.

Gina Stewart

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Michelle, our query is quite simple and basically just says that the birthday card attribute equals today, they have an email, and no solicit codes pertaining to them not wanting email.



I initially added the attribute with month/day/current year to all constituents with a birthday. I do all with a birthday, not just ones with an email, because you might capture an email throughout the year and it will keep you from having to add the attribute as you go along.



In December, I update the attributes for any with birthdays from January to November to have the attribute year be the next year. Then in January, once all of the the December emails have gone out, I update the December birthdays to be the next year. For example, this December I will update all January through November birthday attributes to have the year 2014. In January 2014 I will then update the December birthday attributes to be 2014 as well.



It takes minimal time to update the attributes, especially for a process that runs on its own every day of the year. We also have an audit query to add the attribute to any individual who gets a birthdate put into RE on Bio1 tab, but does not have the attribute. I hope this helps. Feel free to ask any other questions you might have!

Michelle Tribe

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Gina, can you let us know how the queries were written for this? Thank you!

Michelle Tribe

This is something I'm trying to tackle right now, and am hitting roadblocks. How is importing the birthday as an attribute helpful? Because for the query, the "specific attribute = today" field will only bring up people for the current year. Does anyone have any advice on how to write a query to get around this?



The only way I can think to get around it is to export the birthdays, change all of the years to the following year, import as attributes, and repeat the process yearly.



Thank you so much!

Jesse Hall

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Thanks Gina! Sounds like a great idea.

Gina Stewart

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Our BBNC is hosted through Blackbaud and we host RE. We have had no problems so far with it and our alumni and donors love it. We have emails go out 7 days a week and we get some responses when ones will go out on the weekend birthdays where they thank us for thinking of them on a Saturday/Sunday. Little do they know, we have it running automatically. We refresh our attributes once a year and redesign the birthday email once a year and besides that, we never have to touch it.

Jesse Hall

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Are you hosted through Blackbaud Gina? And, have you ever had any problems with your query or the scheduled email not going out (i.e. Blackbaud maintenance or list not pulling correctly)?

Gina Stewart

Chris Martin:
That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

We have added an attribute with people's birth month/day/ and the current year to send out daily birthday emails. We update the attributes once a year, so not a big hassle and it has been a great stewardship touch with our donors/alumni.

Chris Martin

Hey Jesse. This is just an idea, but I think it should work:



1) Create a dynamic constituent query in RE that searches for constituents whose birthday = 'this month'.



2) In BBNC, create an email template with the generic birthday message/content.



3) In BBNC, create a Scheduled Email tied to the query and template above and set its recurrence to monthly.



Hope that helps.

Jesse Hall

Chris,



I think I got a little excited with my initial requests. After talking more with our database administrator, we believe your approach for both the monthly and daily scheduled email are totally feasible. However, after thinking about it further, we believe there is too many variables that could get in the way of the success of a daily scheduled email.



With that I believe we will do a batch each month using the method you described above. Thank you very much for all of your support and never mind on contacting RE.



Have a great weekend.

Chris Martin

No problem Jesse. If you're comfortable doing so, you can create a new support case by calling our support line or via Case Central. Or if you prefer, I can get a case created for you. Just let me know whether you wanted to do this in RE or EE. I'll need your email address and site ID as well. You can email me directly at chris dot martin at blackbaud dot com.

Jesse Hall

It would be helpful. We would like to research the feasiblity of this. Your responses have been great. Thanks Chris.

Chris Martin

That makes sense Rachel. An alternate solution might be to use a date-based attribute and name it something like "Birthday Attribute". You could then query on that attribute = 'today' instead of birthdate = 'this month'.



I'm not 100% sure of what the process would be to export all of your birthdays and re-import them to globally populate a new birthday attribute, but I feel like that is doable and would work without too much hassle.



But since this suggesting is coming from a mind that's hard-wired for BBNC, I'll have to defer to our RE and EE experts for whether there's any impact to doing that that I'm not seeing. If you wanted someone on our end to dig in on this, just let us know.

Rachel Welsh

I wish that EE and RE could query "birthday", not just "birthdate" ... then you could have birthday=today and send daily emails.

Jesse Hall

That's what I was afraid of, however a monthly batch should work too. Thank you Chris and Karen!



Jesse

Chris Martin

All of the options to send birthday emails more frequently than monthly (that I can think of) start requiring manual intervention...like manually changing the query criteria for birthday date daily.

Karen Badham

Hey Jesse,



Sorry. I don't know The Raiser's Edge queries You can create a case with an RE analyst to confirm if it's possible or not.



Thanks!


Karen

Jesse Hall

Do you know how you would go about doing so? Our database administrator said there is no option in Raiser's Edge which will allow pulling a query whose birthday = "today"



Thank you.

Karen Badham

Hello Jesse,



Daily works just as well for this! I think Chris only used monthly in his example because that's what we've seen before in support.



Thanks!


Karen

Jesse Hall

Chris,



Thank you for your response, this sounds like the most efficient approach.



What are your thoughts on creating a daily email that would go out on the day of a constituent’s birthday?



Is there more of a benefit to monthly or daily?



Thanks!



Jesse