Tracking how our appeals come in

Maggie Sis · June 2017

Hello all,

My organization is trying to come up with a way to track how our appeals are coming in: direct mail, online, email, calling program or other. Most of our appeals go out via direct mail and emails so we want to measure what avenue creates the most responses of giving. We have thought about creating seperate appeals for each avenue but it won't work very well for the reporting side. I am thinking about adding an appeal attribute for each avenue (direct mail, email, ect.). Has anyone tried this with success?

All ideas are appreciated! Thank you!

Maggie

Ryan Hyde · June 2017

We use gift subtype to identify the incoming source of the gift. We're integrated with FE, so different revenue sources equate to different merchant services making deposits int our accounts, which is what gift subtype is typically used for. Really it's just an added bonus that it identifies whether a gift came in via direct mail or online.

We don't have a good way of identifying when a gift comes in over the phone though. We process those credit card payments in a git batch within RE using BBMS (BBMS is also a gift subtype). Problem with that, though, is that we use the same process to charge cards when the donor has replied via direct mail and written down the card number on our remit slip, so I can't easily differentiate DM responses vs telephone responses that way. However, since I know that each of those two categories are very low volume for us, it doesn't bother me.

Still, you could create differeng gift subtypes for these things as well if that's important to you. If your'e integrated with FE, you could just mirror the GL account numbers in each of them so that they behave the same way insofar as FE is concerned.

Jen Claudy · June 2017

I like to use Appeal Category to track how things are sent out (letter, postcard, newsletter, email, etc.). For tracking how gifts come in, I've used Gift Code (on the Misc Tab) or a Gift Attribute, which I like better because of the Comment field on the Attribute. The Attribute has a dropdown for the Description with different options, and then the Comment provides a place for more detail where applicable. So say a donor calls in a credit card after receiving a letter, and talks to Robert Hernandez, one of our gift officers...the Attribute would say "phone" and the comment would be "R.Hernandez". That way, if there are questions down the road (because hopefully Robert also added an Action and/or Note with any other information gleaned from the conversation), we know who to talk to.

At one point, I was asked to figure out how many BREs (business reply envelopes) we received back. So I also started tracking that with the Gift Attribute. Much easier than going thru a box of paperwork! My normal plan is to track anything and everything that can be tracked without adding considerable additional work/time, because you never know what the boss will want to see next...or the new Dev Committee Chair, or the new boss, etc. =)

ShawnAlis Cusato · July 2017

I'm curious why the marketing segment and marketing code on the appeal aren't used for this. We don't do direct mail--perhaps those fields are utilized by the direct mail companies?

I'm also curious how to reply to posts without the automatic copy of the previous post. I spend too much time clicking around before I make it go away!

Ryan Hyde · July 2017

Marketing Segment and Marketing Code are optional categories of information that help define why/how an appeal was sent to a donor. What Maggie is looking to do is track how gifts from an appeal come in. All appeals going out (for many orgs) go out via direct mail, but that DM appeal may reference a landing page to go donate through, which gets tied back to the appeal, so a direct mail gift may actually come in via the org's web site.

And as for your second question, beats me! I just highlight/delete the copied text every time. If someone has a solution, I'm all ears. Eyes? Brain? I'm open to learning something new is what I'm saying.

Jen Claudy · July 2017

As for removing previous posts, if you time it just right, the previous post will be highlighted when you click [Reply]. Otherwise, I just do Ctrl+A (select all) and [Delete].

Then, once I've written my comment, I do Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C (copy to clipboard) before clicking [Post]...because I've been caught one too many times where the site or my browser crashes and doesn't post my comment...and the text is gone. The first time it happened I had written a novel. The second and third times not quite so bad, but still. And eventually I got in the habit of copying to the clipboard as a precaution. It's been a while since I've gotten that error, but better safe than sorry!

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

regarding removing previous text - respond by clicking the "Reply on SIte" link at the bottom of the post works for me. Doesn't bring in any previous posts. Agree that the pulled in text is frustrating and can be time consuming to find the most recent response as sometimes it's at the top but most the bottom.

ShawnAlis Cusato · July 2017

Thanks for the tips!

Tracking how our appeals come in

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