Best Appeal Practices

Snezhana Kenarova 2

Hello, our database manager left and I was asked to step in into the roll. I have prior RE knowledge but I have a question re: best practices in setting up appeals in RE. We just sent out our spring mailing and I had to work with 6 different mailing lists as each mailing list received a different version of the email: Mailing List 1 received general email; List 2-received personalized email from our ED, List 3 - personalized email from major gift officer and so on.

My questions is should I create one appeal for example 2023 Spring Appeal and list the different version as separate packages or do I create different appeals for each mailing list for example SA-23/General; SA-23 Personalized; SA-23 MGO etc. It looks like in the past it wasn't done in a consistent ways, so my hope is to fix that.

I would appreciate your help and would love to learn more on how you have it set up at your organization. Thank you.

Mark Guncheon 2

@Snezhana Kenarova We use packages just like your situation. It gives us more data to analyze in an easier way for reporting. All of your donors are getting a Spring appeal. Using packages allows you to compare each type of Spring appeal based on a package filter in query and export. But also in NXT, you can filter lists using a package filter which may be easier than how you create a list now. Another way to use packages is for event appeals. It's one event but we may have a save the date mailing or emailing, tickets, sponsor levels, raffle tickets, etc.

Snezhana Kenarova 2

@Mark Guncheon thank you so much! I completely agree and it makes total sense. I ended up following what has previously been done as I didn't want to change the process while in the middle of this fiscal year. But I'll definitely start managing all appeals moving forward in the way you described which will ensure better and more accurate reporting.

Karen Diener 2

1000% in agreement with @Mark Guncheon. This method allows you to see performance of the spring mailing overall, but also break it down to see how well each specific item performed.

The best is when you the number solicited filled in for the appeal as a whole and for each individual package. And make sure that each gift has the Appeal and Package filled in as well. You can run a pretty wonderful Appeal Performance report that usually blows people's minds when I show them.

Karen

Austen Brown

@Snezhana Kenarova - Here's additional detail on how to run the Appeal Performance Report canned report in Database View that @Karen Diener mentioned.