Setting up Action Tracks in RE

Kayla Pederson

Hello, I'm very new to action tracks but would like to learn more about them and how to set them up. Does anyone out there have any how to sheets or great resources I can refer to?


Thanks.

 

Rachel Slager 2

The powerpoint I linked below is from Raiser's Edge is very handy and much better than the boring user guides.  However, the user guide is an excellent resource.  The link is geared towards moves management, but it's useful to demonstrate the set-up.


 If you are just getting started, I'll share that I've instituted action tracks numerous times for Solicitors and they eventually go out of use because moving a donor often skips steps or even goes back to the beginning, getting off 'track'.


I found a better use which is applying it to routines that never change.  For instance, someone requests planned giving information.  An action is made to send them materials and a welcome letter, and than an action for about a month later is made to follow-up by phone and attempt to meet, and an action is made to include them on the next planned giving newsletter.



https://www.blackbaud.com/files/resources/recordings/OnlineUserClinic_ActionTracksMovesMgmt.pdf

 

Faith Murray

Rachel Slager:

The powerpoint I linked below is from Raiser's Edge is very handy and much better than the boring user guides.  However, the user guide is an excellent resource.  The link is geared towards moves management, but it's useful to demonstrate the set-up.


 If you are just getting started, I'll share that I've instituted action tracks numerous times for Solicitors and they eventually go out of use because moving a donor often skips steps or even goes back to the beginning, getting off 'track'.


I found a better use which is applying it to routines that never change.  For instance, someone requests planned giving information.  An action is made to send them materials and a welcome letter, and than an action for about a month later is made to follow-up by phone and attempt to meet, and an action is made to include them on the next planned giving newsletter.



https://www.blackbaud.com/files/resources/recordings/OnlineUserClinic_ActionTracksMovesMgmt.pdf

 

I am also interested in Action tracks - so far, we have never used them at our org. Can you efficiently Query on the next step in a specific Action Track sequence? We are implementing a donor welcome process, and am debating whether to use Actions or Attributes to track donors' progression through the welcome process. Since we can have hundreds of new donors at one time, an automated process would be best.

Michelle Tribe

Kayla, I don't have any resources on Action Tracks to share.


But I have used them successfully in two ways.


First: New donor welcome series. My org uses NetCommunity for emails and scheduled emails. I lump new donors into essentially four groups (first time OTG donor online, new recurring donor online, first time OTG donor offline, new recurring donor offline).  I have four sets of action tracks, to 1. send the email series to online donors (the date of the action prompts the email in NetCommunity via a constituent query, where date = today), send the paper series to offline donors (weekly volunteers run the "Mail this week" query and make each action as completed when done), and to trigger the follow-up phone call (where I have a query that is "people to phone this week", and I mark them completed after speaking with each or leaving a message.


I find it hard to summarize it as there are many components (queries, scheduled emails, templates, lists, action tracks, etc!) but if you carefully map it out you can work it out.


2. For recurring donors, I have a "credit card declined" action track. It sends three emails, prompts me to call, then prompts a volunteer to print and send a decline letter if I still haven't heard from them. Once I get the new credit card number I delete the future actions to stop the track.  Again, the set up was complicated, but now that it's running it works perfectly for me.


Feel free to shoot me an email at michellet@ottawahumane.ca if you would like further explanation!

Kayla Pederson

Thanks so much for the tips!!

 

Kayla
Pederson

Database Manager

Make-A-Wish^® North Dakota

--------------------------------------------

PLEASE NOTE
– NEW ADDRESS:

4143 26^th Avenue South, Suite 104

Fargo, ND  58104

--------------------------------------------

kpederson@northdakota.wish.org

Direct Line: 701.353.8832

Fax: 701.280.2684

--------------------------------------------

northdakota.wish.org | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube 

------------------------------------

 

 

 

Rebecca Goldfinger

Hi, all- I am new to Raiser's Edge and am trying to set up Action Tracks. I've run into a few difficulties, though. One of them is: is there a way to create a track for specific constituents that is triggered when they make their next donation? I.e., the initial conditions are (a) their constituent ID is one of a list that I have in a query and (b) they just made a donation. Is there a way to set up a track based on those two conditions?


Thanks very much for your consideration,

Rebecca