Inclusion in Direct Mail

Claudia Sauers

Hey everyone,


I am looking for some feedback, advices, tips...


I recently joined an organization that is just about one year in to Raisers Edge, that being said there is still a ton of clean to be done from the conversion as well as some clean up from things that were tried initially but changed down the road. My recently discovered road block relates to direct mail. It looks like historically we have been pulling our direct mail lists based upon a "solicitation type attribute" and then suppressing based on the solicit codes, etc. So essentially to ever be included in direct mail you would need to have the solicitation type attribute set to direct mail. One potential complication is that we get a number of acquisition donors that should then be included in direct mail again. Our gift entry method is split, some through an import and some through batch. Our import comes from our lockbox provider, the records that are imported are all coded with the attribute, but it looks like the ones entered through batch entry are not. Now I would simply just pull an entire database list instead of the attribute however we have other "solicitation type" attributes that are not direct mail and that are not directly linked to solicit codes, so my option would be to supress based on those other attributes as well as the previous supression criteria.


Lists are currently pulled:

Include: Solicitation Type Attribute= Direct Mail

Suppress: Misc. Solicit Codes, etc.


Proposed change:

Include: Pull entire database

Supress: Misc. Solicit Codes, Other Solicitation Type Attributes, etc.


Now my trouble is wrapping my head around all of it at the same time, at first glance do you see any trouble with my proposed changes?


I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks community!

Andrew Ludwell

Hi Claudia


My first thought is that by pulling the entire database, you may pull old records or ones that are unlikely to 'reactivate'.


Is there an initial grouping that you can create instead of the entire list? For example, some sort of marker for recent activity (e.g. gift, addition to database, attended an event etc.)?