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Mercedes McCayRead
Mercedes McCayRead ✭
Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello Community,


This year with our year end appeal we're going to try email followups, which we've done before but this year they're a bit more complicated so I need some help/suggestions.  First, the plan is to send a physical year end letter to those who meet our criteria.  Then we will do email followups that will have two tracks (Tracks A and B.)  The first track (Track A) will be to those who received the letter who haven't yet given and Track B will be to everyone else in the database that we have emails for.  My issue is this:  chances are high that we have emails for both spouses when in reality, only the HOH received the mailing.  So for example Jane and Joe Smith received the letter and should receive email followup Track A. But with HOH processing in the original query Joe Smith is the email that would be on the Track A list, correct?  And then Jane Smith's email would pull into my Track B list.  I just want to make sure that I'm thinking this through properly.  My solution right now for this is to export both constituents rather than HOH only (which is how we do mailings - I create a query and then export HOH so development officers and my director can go through and add/remove people) and then use those constituent IDs to make a separate Track A query.  Then, I figure I'll have to export everyone else in my database who has an email and do a vlookup to remove those on the original Track A query to create my Track B list. That's my plan but I feel like maybe I'm missing something or over-complicating something.  Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.


Oh, and then in order to track these in OLX I want to set up separate links so that we can tell if they responded to the first, second or third email reminder.  So I would need a link for each Track x 3, correct? 


I just want to make sure that I talk this through with people who will hopefully understand what I'm talking about since nobody around here has a clue.  ?


Thanks!
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  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hi Mercedes - I think you are on the right track with exporting and reviewing constituent lists manually, outside of RE in Excel, to create a query list for Track A.  Once you have the constituent ID's of everyone (HOH, Spouse, Family Members, etc.) that should be in Track A, you can then create a query in your system with those Constituents; you can do this one of two ways: through a "Smart Copy/Paste" into Query or by using the Import Feature to create an Output Query.  Go ahead and create a query (if you don't already have one) for constituents with an active email address in your system.  You can then merge the queries using the operator "SUB" - put the query of all constituent with active emails as your "Primary" query and then the query you created for Track A as your "Secondary" query, this will create a query that can be used for Track B; if you have questions about merging queries read this KB Article.  


    In regards to tracking response, when data is downloaded from OLX into RE an appeal is created on the Constituent's record and denotes what their response was (e.g. Received, Opened, Clicked, Gave, Bounced, or Opt-Out).  Each email you send will create a new appeal in the constituents record.  I am not sure what you mean by "link", but you definitely do not need more than one. 


    If you have any other questions, let me know.  I run segmented lists for OLX emails on a weekly basis, and am happy to help in anyway that I can.  
  • Mercedes McCayRead
    Mercedes McCayRead ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Austen,


    Thank you for so much for your reply! When I was talking about a "link" I was referring to the actual OLX form (the "link" would be in the body of the email as Donate Now), but think I realized later that I could probably just get away with one form for the exact reason you mention below: every time I click "add to RE" from the OLX email marketing tab it should create a new appeal on each of those records who received the email, right?  As long as that's the case then I can just use my YE Appeal OLX form for everything.  One question though, if I send the email appeal with a link to the OLX form and they click it and make a donation, when I download my donation transactions will it automatically credit it to that OLX appeal (BBOXxxxxxxx that was assigned when the email went out?)  We've only done this one other time and it was a few years ago...since then we've been using MailChimp for most of our email pushes for things so I haven't really been tracking everything like I should/could.


    Thanks again for your help.
  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Mercedes - "Link" makes more sense now! Thanks for elaborating.  Unfortunately, the email appeal (BBOXxxxxx) cannot be automatically applied; in order to have a gift appeal applied automatically you would have to go with your original idea of having multiple OLX forms on your website. If you were to go back to this path I think you could get away with having only two additional forms, one for Track A and one for Track B. Whoever is doing your gift entry from OLX could be made aware when a new email has gone out to apply a new appeal during gift entry or you could update the back-end of the form and choose a new appeal for the gifts to be downloaded with. 


    If this were my project I would send all the emails with a link to the same OLX form, to keep it simple. After committing the gifts to RE, I would review the gifts that came in through the YE OLX form and compare it to the timing of each of the three follow-up emails, depending on Track. In areas where I can see that they gave to a specific email, I would add a package ID to the gift to denote which email they gave from (i.e. Jane Smith is Track A gave to the second follow up email - Appeal: "YE Appeal" / Package: "TrackA_2ndEmail").  That way, you can group all gifts from the YE appeal together, and still be able to search for the secondary information about the emails. 
  • Mercedes McCayRead
    Mercedes McCayRead ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Austen - Okay, I like your idea about doing one OLX form and that's what I've decided to go with.  Since I do all entry anyway, it shouldn't be that difficult for me to add packages based on the follow up emails that were sent out and then we can at least get a good idea of those who are actually responding to our online pushes.  Thanks so much for your help!

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