Phasing in monthly receipts/thank you messages for sustainers

Miranda Carter

I'm looking to start sending monthly receipts/thank you messages to our monthly donors.


1 - Do folks have recommendations for the mechanism to set these up? The monthly receipt function on donation forms seems simple enough, but would it be easier to set up a recurring email to active sustainers?


2 - Do folks have recommendations on how to phase in monthly reciepts/thank you messages? We could just add them for new monthly donors going forward (easiest option). Or we could add them for everyone, even sustainers that have been on file for awhile, but that requires going back to every archived form to turn on the monthly receipt function. I imagine I would also need to send those people a message and give them a heads up that they'll start receiving monthly emails.


Has anyone phased in monthly receipts like this? Any experince or input would be much appreciated!


Miranda

Brian Mucha

I'd use the Monthly Sustainer Thank You AR, rather than a broadcast email. Sometimes a payment fails, and the AR will not fire (instead it will send the Sustainer Payment Failed AR if active.) It also clues the donor in to when the gift processes.


I wouldn't think you'd need to announce monthly payment ARs, or have any special roll-out. It doesn't seem that earth shattering to me. I suppose you could have a line at the top of the first one.


Consider using a resuable doc for the AR contents. That way you aren't going back to edit all your forms later when the content changes.


You could run a donation report and prioritize the old forms that are most active, and then update the others later.


If you are hitting every form anyhow, check out the Gift Service Center settings, and make sure the gifts from every form can use it. Include a link to the service center in your AR.

Sara Hoffman

The other "catch" or thing to watch out for is an uptick in cancellations and customer service related. 

It was a general convention a while back to not always use these because you're reminding people that they're "spending money."

Not sure if that really holds true today, but worth mentioning. 


Cheers,

Sara

Miranda Carter

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Definitely worth
considering…

_____

Miranda Carter

National Online Campaign
Manager

Food & Water
Watch

O (202) 683-4957

mcarter@fwwatch.org

Ryan O'Keefe

Following up on Sarah's note earlier, I don't always think you need to send them a reminder.  You do have the ability to do aggregate sustain receipting within the receipt manager area.  This will allow you to specify a certain date range to pull sustain giving receipts and send them out as pdf receipts.  Some orgs choose to do this around the end of the year to send thier monthly donors a look at their yearly giving. 


Here's some of the documentation on how to generate sustain receipting in case you don't want to use the recurring sustainer AR.

https://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/helpfiles/luminate-online/help/luminateonline.html#../Subsystems/Setup/Generate_Sustaining_Receipts.html%3FTocPath%3DSetup|Create%2520and%2520Manage%2520PDF%2520Receipts|Generate%2520Sustaining%2520Receipts|_____0

Brian Mucha

Ryan O'Keefe:

Following up on Sarah's note earlier, I don't always think you need to send them a reminder.  You do have the ability to do aggregate sustain receipting within the receipt manager area.  This will allow you to specify a certain date range to pull sustain giving receipts and send them out as pdf receipts.  Some orgs choose to do this around the end of the year to send thier monthly donors a look at their yearly giving. 


Here's some of the documentation on how to generate sustain receipting in case you don't want to use the recurring sustainer AR.

https://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/helpfiles/luminate-online/help/luminateonline.html#../Subsystems/Setup/Generate_Sustaining_Receipts.html%3FTocPath%3DSetup|Create%2520and%2520Manage%2520PDF%2520Receipts|Generate%2520Sustaining%2520Receipts|_____0

That's pretty cool, you can set it up by campaign.


So you could use a Google Experiment to split visitors between two duplicate forms in separate campaigns, and do a long term A/B test on which approach was best.


If you only send a roll-up at the end of the year, you might have surprised donors demanding months of refunds. How big a hassle is that for finance? We've had a few protesting ongoing sustaining gifts which they selected and configured (and even received monthly ARs for.)