populating records when mailing an appeal

Carla Washington · August 2018

Hello everyone,

My boss is asking how or what do we do when we mail out an appeal for it to automatically populate the constituents record? So in other words, if we are doing a big mailing for an appeal and we run a query to get the list of names we are mailing out to how do we go about having these records automatically populate that they had this appeal sent to them? Is there a way or do we have to in individually to each record to input this information? We have thousands of records so if this cant be done automatically it would take a ton of man hours to enter this one by one.

I hope this makes sense!

Thank you,

Carla.

JoAnn Strommen · August 2018

If you're using Appeal Cards or segmenting in Mail, you can check a box to have the appeal added. It's there but I haven't used that method.

I use global add to add the appeal. Just use the query utilized for the mailing. Enter your appeal info - pretty straight forward.

James Kew · August 2018

One idea is that, if you use Quick Letters to create an output query of your desired records for later export, you can use the "Segment mail run/Add Appeal and Package to Constituent record" functionality to update those constituents' Appeals tabs automatically. The following Knowledgebase solution may be of help:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/52570

John Heizer · August 2018

Carla Washington:

Hello everyone,

My boss is asking how or what do we do when we mail out an appeal for it to automatically populate the constituents record? So in other words, if we are doing a big mailing for an appeal and we run a query to get the list of names we are mailing out to how do we go about having these records automatically populate that they had this appeal sent to them? Is there a way or do we have to in individually to each record to input this information? We have thousands of records so if this cant be done automatically it would take a ton of man hours to enter this one by one.

I hope this makes sense!

Thank you,

Carla.

In addition to using the functionality built into the Mail module, you can either import Constituent Appeal records (note that this is different from Appeal records) or do a Global Add.

Ryan Hyde · August 2018

I always do this via import. We typically provide very large lists to a 3rd party direct mail vendor, and they do a little extra deduping and cleanup work. When their mail file is done, they send it back to us for data entry. The file includes Constituent ID (because everyone should always export constituent ID, no matter what you're exporting), and I just pull the appeal and package (and date solicited) onto the records via import.

Jennifer Donlevie · August 2018

Carla Washington:

Hello everyone,

My boss is asking how or what do we do when we mail out an appeal for it to automatically populate the constituents record? So in other words, if we are doing a big mailing for an appeal and we run a query to get the list of names we are mailing out to how do we go about having these records automatically populate that they had this appeal sent to them? Is there a way or do we have to in individually to each record to input this information? We have thousands of records so if this cant be done automatically it would take a ton of man hours to enter this one by one.

I hope this makes sense!

Thank you,

Carla.

Hi Carla,

I would either add the appeal globally based on your query, or if you export the list you can use the constituent ID to import the appeal back onto the constituent record once you have selected the records you want to send out. Hope this helps. The appeal import is very simple so you should be able to accomplish that.

Matthew Nareff · August 2018

Carla Washington:

Hello everyone,

My boss is asking how or what do we do when we mail out an appeal for it to automatically populate the constituents record? So in other words, if we are doing a big mailing for an appeal and we run a query to get the list of names we are mailing out to how do we go about having these records automatically populate that they had this appeal sent to them? Is there a way or do we have to in individually to each record to input this information? We have thousands of records so if this cant be done automatically it would take a ton of man hours to enter this one by one.

I hope this makes sense!

Thank you,

Carla.

I always do this by an import/global add depending on how segmented the appeal is. Sometimes there are separate packages which means import because the data is different for each constituent. But if everything is the same then global add works well. I often wait until the appeal has actually been sent/mailed/emailed, etc. Sometimes I pull some names because gifts have come in between when I created the list and when it actually is going out in the mail or something like that and I want to make sure the coding is accurate and only appears on a record if they were actually a recipient of that appeal.

Sharon Whiteside 2 · August 2019

Is the only way to do a global edit via Query? We did a query for the Direct Mail and it had 947 records but we only mailed a hard copy to 168 people. How do I go back in edit those records, or would it be faster to do manually? Thanks!

Ryan Hyde · August 2019

Do you have the constituent IDs or the import IDs for the 168 people you mailed? If so, you can copy and paste those into a query. Use the Constituent ID <one of> criteria. Scroll down the box with all the blank rows in it by a couple of lines, then click into the box and paste your values. You can paste up to 500 records at a time. Nobody knows why you need to scroll down a little bit before you paste stuff in, but it's the only way it works. Go figure.

Once you've got them pasted in, you can do a global add to add the appeal to everyone's record.

Or you could just do it the straight forward way, which is to set up an import. But if you're worried about doing imports at this point in your career, a global add is fine. You won't be able to change the package on a per-constituent level, but that may not be relevant to you.

Sharon Whiteside 2 · August 2019

HI
– OK Yes I have the constituent ID’s for all. I will try the
paste into the query thing, as I have never done an
Import..

Thanks
Ryan

Aaron Rothberg · August 2019

Hi Ryan Hyde‍

Being the efficiency freak that I am, I thought I'd point out that your method for pasting in Ids is correct, but you don't have to scroll down a couple of lines. If you left-click in that scroll bar area ONCE, that's enough to click in the white area and then paste. ;D

populating records when mailing an appeal

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