Managing Email Addresses and Email Opt Outs

I'm guessing every organization is going to be a little different.  The update to 7.95 forced us to change our process a little bit.  Here's what we do now:

Active Email: We have Email 1, Email 2, Email 3 and Email 4.  Those are kept active and one of those is marked as Primary.

Unsubscribes: If someone unsubscribes from mass emails (but the email is still good) we do this:  Mark check the type to Unsubscribed Email 1, remove the primary and turn on DNC.  This way our gift officers know the email is still good (and can send individual email messages) but the person will not be sent mass emails.

Bounces: If we receive a hard bounce email we do this: Change the type to Bounced Email 1 and mark the email as inactive.


We only use the "requests no email" checkmark if someone really has said, "I don't want anymore email from you ever again!" or if we have someone we don't want to contact in any way.  Those are kind of rare, but when they happen we try to put a quick note on the record with the complaint or a copy of the message where they tell us they don't want to be emailed anymore. 


We've found that some people we marked as "Requests No Email" really didn't remember doing that and have changed their mind when asked about it.  We're considering sending out a postcard to everyone who has "no email" on their record and just remind them they can get email (for free!) if they go online and let us know.


Would also love to hear how other people are handling email...

 

Rebecca Dennis:

Please can you tell me about how your organization manages email addresses and email opt outs?

Currently when we receive an email opt out via BBNC or an alternate pathway we utilize Solicit Codes and the 'Requests No Email' check box on the constituent record and opt out the entire record from receiving email. We are finding however that email addresses are hard to keep track of and there is not always an easy way to identify whether an email address belongs to constituent A or constituent B. Constituent A may have registered constituent B for an event and instead of entering constituent B's email address they duplicate their own or possibly constituent A and B share a household email address, or constituent A is a child of constituent B and does not have their own email address, there are so many possibilities.

Does your organization opt out the entire record from receiving email or just the email address itself? Please can you tell me about your steps to code the record/contact data so that it no longer pulls into your email mailing lists? If an email address exists on multiple records how do you handle that, do you code all of the records where the email address exists or just specifically the one that the opt out is linked to? I would also love to hear about how you handle email address integrity in general. Do you allow email addresses to exist on more than one record? How do you ensure that the preferred email address you are emailing is the best email address you have on record? Do you update email addresses based on external files or only when the constituent provides it to you directly?


Thank you so much for your time, I am really looking forward to hearing about how others track and manage this data.

Becky