Sharing My Power Automate template: Birthday email campaigns with Bonus AI option

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Heather McLean
Heather McLean
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in SKY Developer General Discussions

Thank you to @Ashley Moose for her help in testing my flows!

Use this flow to create an automated email campaign that sends supporters a message for their birthday. It’s an enhancement on the built-in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT tools. This automation will send a birthday email to a constituent each year; it does not need to be rebuilt annually. Additionally, the “From” name on your birthday emails can be the assigned Fundraiser for that constituent.

Let’s take a look at how this works!

  • Description: This scheduled cloud flow sends birthday emails to your constituents.
  • Required connections:
    • Raiser’s Edge NXT Constituents
    • Raiser’s Edge NXT Interactions
    • Microsoft Outlook
  • Suggested skill level required to use this template:
    • Beginner
  • Configuration details:
    • This Birthday Email template is a Scheduled Cloud Flow:
      1. Gets the list of Today’s Birthdays from RENXT.
      2. If there is at least one record in the List then the flow continues.
      3. For each record in the list (Apply to each) the flow gets the details of the Birthday Recipient.
      4. Then, it determines if there is a Specific fundraiser assigned to the Birthday Recipient. The email sends from the First one in the List if there are multiple assigned of the specified type.
      5. If there is a Fundraiser of that type assigned, then the Birthday email is sent from the Fundraiser. If not, then it is sent from a Default signer, such as your Executive Director.
      6. An Action is created in RENXT to track when the email is sent.
  • Category:
    • Acknowledgement
  • Instructions:
    • You will need to reconfigure the following Trigger and Actions to meet your specific business process:
      • Trigger – “Recurrence”: It is currently set-up to run at 10am ET every day.
      • Action – “Initialize variable – Default sender “Send As” and “Reply To email” email”: Update the email address to use to send the Birthday emails when there is no Fundraiser.
        • NOTE: This email address will either need to be the flow’s owner or an email address in a Group of which the flow's owner is a member. Otherwise, you will receive an error about not being authorized to send email from that account.
      • Action – “List constituents – Get Today’s Birthdays List”: Select your List from RENXT.
        • NOTE: Ensure your List in RENXT is set to filter to Birthdate = Today and that you only include Constituents to whom you can send email by Excluding the proper Solicit Codes.
      • Action – “Filter array”: Update the Filter Query to “is equal to” the specific Fundraiser Type from whom you want the Birthday email sent.
        • NOTE: Ensure all your fundraisers have Primary Email Addresses.
      • Complete these steps for both sides (yes and no) of the “Condition – If there is a Fundraiser with the Right Type”. There are a TOTAL OF 6 ACTIONS that need to be updated to handle all the scenarios.
        • Action – “Send an email” (Outlook):
          • Update the email subject line and copy. Ensure you use the </> option to enter this copy in HTML format.
        • Action – “Create a constituent action”:
          • Update the Category and any other required fields you want to include on your Action that will post to RENXT.

BONUS! Use Generative AI to Personalize your Birthday Emails

Want to take it one step further and personalize each auto-generated email (with a human review step)? As a refinement on the above flow that sends generic birthday emails to each qualifying constituent, generative AI can draft personalized emails for you to review and send. For that extra level of refinement, use the Solution attached to this post and follow these additional configuration steps.

Before you begin:

Part 1 – Today’s Birthday Email Campaign with AI Builder

  • Description: This flow retrieves today’s birthdays from RENXT.
  • Required connections:
    • Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT Constituents
    • Microsoft SharePoint
  • Suggested skill level required to use this template:
    • Beginner
  • Configuration details:
    • This Birthday Email template is a Scheduled Cloud Flow:
      • Deletes yesterday’s birthdays from the SharePoint List.
      • Gets the list of Today’s Birthdays from RENXT.
      • Checks to see if the records in the List have a Primary Email Address.
        • NOTE: The flow ignores constituents who have no Primary Email Address.
      • Moves any records from that RENXT List to SharePoint.
  • Instructions:
    • You will need to reconfigure the following Trigger and Actions to meet your specific business process:
      • Trigger – “Recurrence”: It is currently set-up to run at 10am ET every day.
      • Action – “Get items – that are in the List from yesterday”: Select the List from SharePoint.
      • Action – “Apply to each – for each item in the List from Yesterday, Delete item”: Select the List from SharePoint.
      • Action – “Create item – Add the record to my SharePoint List”: Select the List from SharePoint.
      • Action – “List constituents – Get Today’s Birthdays List”: Select your List from RENXT.
        • NOTE: Ensure your List in RENXT is set to filter to Birthdate = Today and that you only include Constituents to whom you can send email by Excluding the proper Solicit Codes.

Part 2 – Today’s Birthday Email Campaign with AI Builder

  • Description: This flow uses AI Builder to draft custom birthday email messages to your constituents.
  • Required connections:
    • Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT Constituents
    • Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT Interactions
    • Microsoft Outlook
    • Microsoft SharePoint
    • AI Builder (Microsoft Dataverse)
    • Content Conversion
    • Approvals
      • NOTE: See restrictions on who can approve here. You may receive an error that “Approvals” has not been provisioned in the environment after first saving the flow. If this error occurs, it should resolve itself by testing the flow.
  • Suggested skill level required to use this template:
    • Intermediate
  • Configuration details:
    • This Birthday Email template is an Automatic Cloud Flow.
      • It is triggered when a record is added to the SharePoint List. (Part 1)
      • The flow gets the details of the Birthday Recipient.
      • Then, it determines if there is a Specific fundraiser assigned to the Birthday Recipient. The email sends from the First one in the List if there are multiple assigned.
      • If there is a Fundraiser of that type assigned, then the Birthday email is sent from the Fundraiser. If not, then it is sent from a Default signer, such as your Executive Director.
      • AI Builder drafts a custom email message for each Constituent.
      • To follow ethical AI guidelines to keep a “Human in the Loop” an approval step is required in the flow.
      • If the approver (fundraiser or default) does not approve the email text (with option to edit) or rejects the Approval then the flow will terminate. No birthday email will be sent.
      • If the email is sent, an Action is created in RENXT with a copy of the email with the HTML cleaned up to plain text.
  • Instructions:
    • You will need to reconfigure the following Trigger and Actions to meet your specific business process:
      • Trigger – “When an item is Created in your SharePoint List”: Select the List you used in Part 1 of this Solution.
      • Action – “Initialize variable – Executive director”: Update the default signer information.
      • Action – “Initialize variable – Email address of approver for Executive Director”: Update the email address to use to send the Birthday emails when there is no Fundraiser.
        • NOTE: This email address will either need to be the flow’s owner or an email address in a Group of which you are a member. Otherwise, you will receive an error about not being authorized to send email from that account.
      • Action – “Initialize variable – Organization name”: Update this to the name of your organization.
      • Action – “Initialize variable – Your RENXT Environment ID”:
        • NOTE: This is your Environment ID which can be found after the envid= in the URL.
      • Action – “Filter array”: Update the Filter Query to “is equal to” the specific Fundraiser Type from whom you want the Birthday email sent.
        • NOTE: Ensure all of your fundraisers have Primary Email Addresses.
      • Complete these steps for both sides (yes and no) of the “Condition – If there is a Fundraiser with the Right Type”. There are a TOTAL OF 12 ACTIONS to update
        • Action – “Create text with GPT”: Add any further details to the prompt text to refine how you want your birthday emails drafted. Make sure you test this several times.
        • Action – “Start and wait for an approval of text”: Under “Settings” - This is set to time out after 13 hours. You should update this based on when you have your Part 1 flow recur so that birthday emails are always sent on the birthdate.
        • Action – “Send an email” (Outlook):
          • Update the email subject line.
        • Action – “Create a constituent action”:
          • Update the Category and any other required fields you want to include on your Action that will post to RENXT.

Today'sBirthdayEmailCampaignStandard_20231204200426.zip

TodaysBirthdayEmailCampaignwithAIBuilder_1_0_0_7.zip

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