Tracking communication preferences in Enterprise CRM

Jason Metcalfe

Hello Colleagues,

 

We are re-evaluating our current use of tracking mail preferences and solicit codes in Enterprise CRM and would like to see how our peers are addressing similar needs.

 

With a focus on greater compliance and improving stewardship practices, we need to track additional details for opt-in and opt-out requests, including a reason code, who is making the change, when the change is made and a comments field for additional context about the change.  We would like to keep the process and "visibility" of the codes manageable and easy to understand.  Further, we need to improve our support for our end user's ability to build a variety of mailing lists while honoring a constituent's request to be excluded from solicitations, invitations and/or general mailings or email communications of various types.

 

For the last 6 and half years we've used a combination of the Solicit Codes (to track opt-out from solicitation communications) and general communication preferences to track opt-in/opt-out for specific communications.  The list of these general communications is long and unwieldly and can cause confusion.  Building queries of lists and excluding the various out-outs can be overly complex for many users.  We have a team of data experts who pull the more complex lists, but would like to support a broader base of end users as well.

 

We saw that Blackbaud will be introducing additional functionality in SP14 with the recent announcement of the Enhanced Communication Consent Preferences & GDPR - SP14 Preview, but it looks like this enhanced functionality will only be associated with Solicit Codes, not Mail Preferences.  While the enhancement of solicit codes is welcomed, it is somewhat disappointing that mailing preferences will not get similar updates, because our friends and supporters make many different types of opt-in and opt-out requests outside of solicitations.

 

Do any other organizations have practices and coding standards that are working well that you can share?  Any insight and experiences that you can share would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Jason

 

Jason Metcalfe

Associate Director of Program Management | Development & Alumni Engagement

The University of British Columbia