Email Appeal not added to organization contacts

Ellen Harris

I’m new to Online Express.  We just sent out our first email and I added the Email Performance data to RE.  But I couldn’t find the appeal added to organizations that had a contact relationship included in the email list.  Support said that if the organization did not receive the email, then it would not be added to the organization's record.  I understand where they are coming from but since it allows you to include contacts it seems like it should put that information somewhere on the record.  The contact is obviously associated with that organization. Ultimately I would like to add an action to the organization record for those that did have a contact included in the email blast. So I would like to know the results (opt-out, bounced etc.) so I can add that information to RE.  Does anyone have a suggestion on how to pull that information from Online Express?

Jen Claudy

When you have the window open where you click the blue button to push the data over to RE, there is an Export option at the top right corner.  Export the entire list, and you'll get an Excel document with email address, name, and response.  Unfortunately, I don't think it will tell you which names are contacts/relationships.  We create Individual records for contacts, so that we can better track which contact receives what from us.


I would think you'd want to first post an Idea in the OLX Idea Bank about this.  The email to relationships feature is still relatively new, so we should expect things like this to have slipped thru the cracks...and BB is usually very receptive to enhancements suggested/requested by users.


For a mailing list that is regularly used, you could keep track of which Org records are in those Queries, and then set up a system (I assume you can do this in Excel, I know you can in Access) where you can match by email address and then Import the data after the fact.  This would be a workaround until BB figures out how better to deal with it within the existing OLX structure.


You can also (and I did just confirm this in my db) put those email addresses on Org 1 of the Org record, in which case OLX will push over the results to the Org record's Appeals Tab and you can see by the email address which contact it went to.  This would be faster than the above, as you'd only need to do it once, really.


You could also do what we did and create Indiv records for the contacts...just make sure your OLX Queries include the Individual records...or test to be sure that if you select to email to relationships that it will work with contacts that have their own records.  And as I'm typing, I realize that I've made an assumption that you're talking about contacts with a Relationship Record but not their own Individual Constituent Record...if I'm wrong, then this option won't work. 


Whatever else you discover, test, or end up deciding to do, please post an update on this thread...and a link to any Ideas you post or find that are related.

Ellen Harris

Thank you for those suggestions!  Yes, I was referring to contacts on relationship records not added as constituents.  Our policy was always to keep the contact's email address on their relationship record because we would send out personalized emails, so we needed the name of the contact associated with that address.  And we do have multiple contacts for some organizations. I hesitate to move them to the Org1 tab and loose that personalization. For some reason I just don't want to convert them to constituent records - when you open the organization record you wouldn't know if they recieved an email unless you drilled down into the relationships.  I think I'll export the list like you mentioned and import the actions for now.  Thanks again for your help!

Jen Claudy

I still highly recommend the OLX Idea Bank.  You can't be the only one with this dilemma.  You may also want to look for sign ups for OLX Discovery Calls and ask to talk about this.  Even if it doesn't end up how you really want it, at least you have a chance to share your opinions and make your voice heard, literally.  The designers don't use the products like we do, so the more information we provide and the more opportunity for them to ask questions of us, the better the end result product will be.