Using Marketing Segment and Marketing Source Code

Dawn Cox

Hello,

I want to be able to identify the channel the donations are coming in on, so post, email and phone. There are fields called Marketing Segment and Marketing source code, what are these fields for and can I use them to collect that information? How are these fields populated? If I am using a batch to import donations, I cant see these fields in the batch in Raiser's Edge.

Alan French

Marketing segment and source code are only on the appeal I believe, not the gift, which might be why they're not showing up in the batch. Personally I wouldn't use those for tracking the channel the donation was received through, as not every gift has to have an appeal associated with it. I would suggest using a field on the gift record (if you don't have a spare one available, you could create a new attribute category).

Segment is usually used to break your appeal recipients into different groups - for example if you sent your appeal to local residents plus anyone who made a gift in the last year, you might want to make those your segments so that you can compare how they performed during analysis of the appeal afterwards.

A marketing source code is an ID number that allows you to track which appeal generated a gift - you might print it on the top of a donation form for example, or include it in a URL in an email, so that you don't have to rely on donors self-reporting what triggered them to make the gift.

If you didn't want to use either of those fields for their intended purpose then it is possible to repurpose them (we use marketing source code for something else) but as I said it might be better to use a field on the gift instead.

Lisa Whatley

As another tracking option, we name our batches by how they come in. For example, we have a LockBox for check donations. Those batches are code with a -LB. That does show on the gift information.