Teamraiser Milestones and triggered emails

Lisa Nichols

I attended a session at the last Summit where an organization showed an example of an email that told the participant how far they were from the next milestone (which in our case represent prizes). So something like "You're just $20 away from the next prize level, [name of prize]!" I can't figure out how to do this via S-tags, and I've yet to figure out how to trigger those emails when a certain level of donation is reached. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Ken Cantu

Hey Lisa,

 

That functionality is built into the TeamRaiser module itself so you don't need to create it using S-Tags or Email tool. See my screenshot below to where I created 4 Milestones and the messages that are triggered when someone reaches each level I set up. You can also associate badges with each of these levels as a reward for hitting each level.

 

 

Cheers,

Ken

Lisa Nichols

Ken Cantu:

Hey Lisa,

 

That functionality is built into the TeamRaiser module itself so you don't need to create it using S-Tags or Email tool. See my screenshot below to where I created 4 Milestones and the messages that are triggered when someone reaches each level I set up. You can also associate badges with each of these levels as a reward for hitting each level.

 

 

Cheers,

Ken

Hi Ken! Thanks for answering. I have those set up. What I wanted to do was to email someone when they're getting close to a milestone to try and give them a boost. As in, "Hey, you're just $25 away from the 250 Donor Club! Send another email!" it looked like the Wildlife Conservation Society had that set up (they did the presentation at the Summit), but I can't figure out how and didn't know how to contact them.

Ken Cantu

Lisa Nichols:

Hi Ken! Thanks for answering. I have those set up. What I wanted to do was to email someone when they're getting close to a milestone to try and give them a boost. As in, "Hey, you're just $25 away from the 250 Donor Club! Send another email!" it looked like the Wildlife Conservation Society had that set up (they did the presentation at the Summit), but I can't figure out how and didn't know how to contact them.

Hmm. My guess is that they had official Mielstones and then created ones in between each milestone which triggered a message but didn't necessarily give them a badge for reaching that stage.

 

Here are the 2011 Summit presentations, can you let me know which one it was? I'll try and ask around internally. http://conviosummit2011.com/?page_id=43 

 

Thanks,

Ken

Brian Mucha

Ken Cantu:

Hmm. My guess is that they had official Mielstones and then created ones in between each milestone which triggered a message but didn't necessarily give them a badge for reaching that stage.

 

Here are the 2011 Summit presentations, can you let me know which one it was? I'll try and ask around internally. http://conviosummit2011.com/?page_id=43 

 

Thanks,

Ken

I think you could do this with dynamic groups to segment the recipents of a recurring email, and an STag for the content.

 

Your group is all participants who have earned $200-249. And the email sends each monday. (Note: Group members will only get this email once, no matter how long they sit there.)

 

For the content, something like...

 

You have only $[[E130:[[S48:1340:dollars]] "$" "" replaceall "," "" replaceall 250 -]] more to go to reach the milestone.

Lisa Nichols

Brian Mucha:

I think you could do this with dynamic groups to segment the recipents of a recurring email, and an STag for the content.

 

Your group is all participants who have earned $200-249. And the email sends each monday. (Note: Group members will only get this email once, no matter how long they sit there.)

 

For the content, something like...

 

You have only $[[E130:[[S48:1340:dollars]] "$" "" replaceall "," "" replaceall 250 -]] more to go to reach the milestone.

It was the "Get a Laser-Like Focus" presentation, Ken.

 

Brian, thanks! So should I have the group rebuild once a week? And I assume that the '250' should be replaced by whatever the milestone amount is?

Brian Mucha

Lisa Nichols:

It was the "Get a Laser-Like Focus" presentation, Ken.

 

Brian, thanks! So should I have the group rebuild once a week? And I assume that the '250' should be replaced by whatever the milestone amount is?

I think you can set the email to rebuild the group before sending,. which I guess is about the same difference. So anyone within the 200-249 range will get one email.

 

You got it regarding the 250.

Those tags (untested) are supposed to remove the $ and , from the dollars earned amount and then subtract that number from 250. Note that 1340 is the fr_id.

 

Lisa Nichols

Brian Mucha:

I think you can set the email to rebuild the group before sending,. which I guess is about the same difference. So anyone within the 200-249 range will get one email.

 

You got it regarding the 250.

Those tags (untested) are supposed to remove the $ and , from the dollars earned amount and then subtract that number from 250. Note that 1340 is the fr_id.

 

Okay, I'm missing something. I'm assuming I would need to build a query to to sort the participants into those groups. I can't figure out what I should be querying on. Am I just not seeing a field?

Jon Cass

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

Then in section 7 Manage Milestones you can use the milestone feature for both Milestones they have already received and for milestones they are close to earning. You can then control the entire message in the setup of each individual milestones.You just wouldn't enable to badging feature for the "you are $$ away from reaching the next milestone" message.

 

That way you don't have to worry about setting up a recoccurring email, rebuilding groups, etc and can have that immediate message when the gift comes in.

 

Lisa Nichols

Jon Cass:

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

Then in section 7 Manage Milestones you can use the milestone feature for both Milestones they have already received and for milestones they are close to earning. You can then control the entire message in the setup of each individual milestones.You just wouldn't enable to badging feature for the "you are $$ away from reaching the next milestone" message.

 

That way you don't have to worry about setting up a recoccurring email, rebuilding groups, etc and can have that immediate message when the gift comes in.

 

I just had a thought. What happens if someone goes past two milestones at once? Do they get both emails? I'd hate for someone to get "Hey, you're almost to this goal" and "Hey you made this goal" at the same time.

Brian Mucha

Jon Cass:

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

Then in section 7 Manage Milestones you can use the milestone feature for both Milestones they have already received and for milestones they are close to earning. You can then control the entire message in the setup of each individual milestones.You just wouldn't enable to badging feature for the "you are $$ away from reaching the next milestone" message.

 

That way you don't have to worry about setting up a recoccurring email, rebuilding groups, etc and can have that immediate message when the gift comes in.

 

I think Jon's idea is better. Honestly I didn't recall that you could turn off badges when I thought of the rebuilding groups idea.

 

I think the E Tag formula could still work.

Brian Mucha

Jon Cass:

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

Then in section 7 Manage Milestones you can use the milestone feature for both Milestones they have already received and for milestones they are close to earning. You can then control the entire message in the setup of each individual milestones.You just wouldn't enable to badging feature for the "you are $$ away from reaching the next milestone" message.

 

That way you don't have to worry about setting up a recoccurring email, rebuilding groups, etc and can have that immediate message when the gift comes in.

 

---

Jon Cass wrote:

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

---

Isn't this the same as leaving the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" AR disabled and just using the autoresponders on each Milestone?

Jon Cass

Brian Mucha:

---

Jon Cass wrote:

One thing to try would be to configure the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" autoresponder to only contain

 

[[S405:xarticipantNotificationContent]]

 

---

Isn't this the same as leaving the "Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone" AR disabled and just using the autoresponders on each Milestone?

possibly...i would be worried that if disabled the autoresponders wouldnt' send at all. Worth testing out though to know for sure...

Jon Cass

Lisa Nichols:

I just had a thought. What happens if someone goes past two milestones at once? Do they get both emails? I'd hate for someone to get "Hey, you're almost to this goal" and "Hey you made this goal" at the same time.

My understanding is that they just the get most recent one they qualify for, but i'd suggest setting up a test registration and putting in a fake offline donation to see how the system behaves. Then go back in and delete the donation.

Brian Mucha

Jon Cass:

possibly...i would be worried that if disabled the autoresponders wouldnt' send at all. Worth testing out though to know for sure...

---

Jon Cass wrote:

possibly...i would be worried that if disabled the autoresponders wouldn't' send at all. Worth testing out though to know for sure...

---

The idea of them not sending freaked me out, because ours is disabled and I haven't tested the milestone ARs in a long time. Here's the story from Support (thanks Kit!)

 

 

Kit Churchill:  when you fill out the information for individual milestone autoresponders it amends the information into the congratulations for reaching a milestone email. So if milestone one has a different subject line it will overwrite that ARs subject and then add body content to the AR.

 

Brian Mucha:  Does that mean that if 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' is disabled, but the Milestone ARs are enabled that nothing gets sent?

 

Brian Mucha:  not clear to me why there are two. I assumed the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' one was old functionality that has been replaced with the milestone specific ones.

 

Kit Churchill:  the individual milestone ARs augment or overwrite the top level Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone. They do that so that if you don't have individual ARs for your milestones, there is still something that goes out to the client.

 

 

So thats pretty interesting, there is more functionality there than I realized.

 

If enabled, the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR will send for every milestone passed - even if that milestone's AR is disabled. (What I though happened.)

 

BUT - If the milestone's AR *is* enabled, then its content amends (I think he means appends to) the content of the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR, and the subject is overwritten. (I assumed they would just get both the specific and general purpose AR - not a combination of the two!)

Jon Cass

Brian Mucha:

---

Jon Cass wrote:

possibly...i would be worried that if disabled the autoresponders wouldn't' send at all. Worth testing out though to know for sure...

---

The idea of them not sending freaked me out, because ours is disabled and I haven't tested the milestone ARs in a long time. Here's the story from Support (thanks Kit!)

 

 

Kit Churchill:  when you fill out the information for individual milestone autoresponders it amends the information into the congratulations for reaching a milestone email. So if milestone one has a different subject line it will overwrite that ARs subject and then add body content to the AR.

 

Brian Mucha:  Does that mean that if 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' is disabled, but the Milestone ARs are enabled that nothing gets sent?

 

Brian Mucha:  not clear to me why there are two. I assumed the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' one was old functionality that has been replaced with the milestone specific ones.

 

Kit Churchill:  the individual milestone ARs augment or overwrite the top level Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone. They do that so that if you don't have individual ARs for your milestones, there is still something that goes out to the client.

 

 

So thats pretty interesting, there is more functionality there than I realized.

 

If enabled, the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR will send for every milestone passed - even if that milestone's AR is disabled. (What I though happened.)

 

BUT - If the milestone's AR *is* enabled, then its content amends (I think he means appends to) the content of the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR, and the subject is overwritten. (I assumed they would just get both the specific and general purpose AR - not a combination of the two!)

---

Brian Mucha wrote:

If enabled, the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR will send for every milestone passed - even if that milestone's AR is disabled. (What I though happened.)

 

BUT - If the milestone's AR *is* enabled, then its content amends (I think he means appends to) the content of the 'Congratulations for Reaching a Fundraising Milestone' AR, and the subject is overwritten. (I assumed they would just get both the specific and general purpose AR - not a combination of the two!)

---

Good info to know! Thanks for getting to the bottom of that Brian.

Michael Lott 2

I can speak to the original question as someone who worked on the implementation described in that presentation! Most of the coaching messages (sent to all participants using Email Campaigns) included a callout box or other content that was conditionalized based on "buckets" of how much someone had raised. There was one big conditional that basically read like a big if, else-if statement - testing to see if a constituent was over the top prize, and if not that, if they were over the second highest prize level, and so on. This is what was pictured in the presentation, I believe (slide 24).

 

Brian is correct that you can use E130 to display how much remaining to a certain amount, but you don't actually need to remove the $ sign, etc before doing the math... here's a tested example: [[E130: 500 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] (it subtracts the second number from the first number). That'd be for amount to go before hitting $500; 1080 is the fr_id.

 

Here's an example set of code for the conditional block I describe, assuming prizes at $500, $250, and $100 (again, 1080 is the fr_id here).

 

<convio:choose xmlns="http://www.convio.com">

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 500" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:499.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>

You're doing great!

</convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 250, less than 500" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:249.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>    

You're just [[E130: 500 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $500 prize.

</convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 100, less than 250" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:99.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>

You're just [[E130: 250 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $250 prize.   
   </convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <conviotherwise title="otherwise ">

You're just [[E130: 100 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $100 prize.   

</conviotherwise>

</convio:choose>

You can just use the "otherwise" statement for the lowest bucket (raised $0-$99.99 in this case), assuming that this is only going to go to people who are registered for the TeamRaiser.

On another track, to send a daily or weekly recurring message to people in a certain range as Brian describes (or an exact amount and you don't want to use additional milestones), you can use a TeamRaiser Participants task rather than a query to create a group of people who've raised a certain amount within a TeamRaiser. And then rebuild on send, etc.

Hope this is helpful to all!

Brian Mucha

Mike Lott:

I can speak to the original question as someone who worked on the implementation described in that presentation! Most of the coaching messages (sent to all participants using Email Campaigns) included a callout box or other content that was conditionalized based on "buckets" of how much someone had raised. There was one big conditional that basically read like a big if, else-if statement - testing to see if a constituent was over the top prize, and if not that, if they were over the second highest prize level, and so on. This is what was pictured in the presentation, I believe (slide 24).

 

Brian is correct that you can use E130 to display how much remaining to a certain amount, but you don't actually need to remove the $ sign, etc before doing the math... here's a tested example: [[E130: 500 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] (it subtracts the second number from the first number). That'd be for amount to go before hitting $500; 1080 is the fr_id.

 

Here's an example set of code for the conditional block I describe, assuming prizes at $500, $250, and $100 (again, 1080 is the fr_id here).

 

<convio:choose xmlns="http://www.convio.com">

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 500" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:499.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>

You're doing great!

</convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 250, less than 500" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:249.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>    

You're just [[E130: 500 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $500 prize.

</convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <convio:when title="Dollars raised greater than or equal to 100, less than 250" test="eq">

   <conviop><convio:session name="48" param="1080:if-dollars-gt:99.99"></convio:session></conviop>

   <conviop>TRUE</conviop>

   <convio:then>

You're just [[E130: 250 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $250 prize.   
   </convio:then>

 </convio:when>

 <conviotherwise title="otherwise ">

You're just [[E130: 100 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]] away from earning the $100 prize.   

</conviotherwise>

</convio:choose>

You can just use the "otherwise" statement for the lowest bucket (raised $0-$99.99 in this case), assuming that this is only going to go to people who are registered for the TeamRaiser.

On another track, to send a daily or weekly recurring message to people in a certain range as Brian describes (or an exact amount and you don't want to use additional milestones), you can use a TeamRaiser Participants task rather than a query to create a group of people who've raised a certain amount within a TeamRaiser. And then rebuild on send, etc.

Hope this is helpful to all!

---

Mike Lott wrote:

Brian is correct that you can use E130 to display how much remaining to a certain amount, but you don't actually need to remove the $ sign, etc before doing the math... here's a tested example: [[E130: 500 [[S48:1080:dollars]] - currency]]

---

Didn't know that. Neat! And of course I had the order backwards. $#*& polish notation.

Marc McWhorter

Ken Cantu:

Hey Lisa,

 

That functionality is built into the TeamRaiser module itself so you don't need to create it using S-Tags or Email tool. See my screenshot below to where I created 4 Milestones and the messages that are triggered when someone reaches each level I set up. You can also associate badges with each of these levels as a reward for hitting each level.

 

 

Cheers,

Ken

Ken,

 

Do you need to disable the milestone autoresponder in the Mange autorespnder section also?  I did not when I set ours up and it sent that autoresponder rather than the one set up in each individual milestone.

 

Thanks,

 

Marc