Questions related to Email Marketing (web view) - not Online Express

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Craig Mulder
Craig Mulder ✭
Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I'm encouraging my staff to use the web view of NXT as much as possible, including the newly available Email Marketing.  However, there are a few things that are either not available or that I cannot figure out how to do. 


1. How are appeals added to the record for each constituent who received an email. Does this happen automatically?

2. I have a constituent list with over 50,000 constituents (and thus it cannot be used with Email Marketing). However, only 22,000 have an active email address. Within the web view I cannot see how to filter my Constituent List to include only constituents with an active email address. Is there a way to do this?

3. Is there a way to use a constituent's salutation as a merge field when creating an email?


Thanks for the help with these questions.


Craig
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  • Craig Mulder
    Craig Mulder ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    To clarify my second question, I know I can do this by using a static database query. I would like to be able to do it within the web view entirely so I don't have to regularly refresh the static query.
  • Mergen Peries
    Mergen Peries ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    Only started playing with Email Marketing in NXT last week, so can't answer 1 yet.

    2 - I think you are right, I can't see a way to do this without refreshing your query in RE.

    3 - Can't see a way to do this either.  Fixed to the Merge fields available.  Prob quite easy for dev to add primary saluations to this list.  Suppose we have to add it to the Ideas portal?
  • Cindy McElhinney
    Cindy McElhinney ✭
    Seventh Anniversary First Reply
    We just ran our first email from Email Marketing in NXT. We had been using OLX. Like Craig, we want our non power users to use NXT as much as possible so we were anxious to give them the email tool newly available in NXT. I participated in a webinar and don't recall BB making a recommendation that if you are using OLX to stick with that because it's very clear now that the two do not have feature parity. So if you are using OLX, I suggest sticking with that until Email Marketing is more built out.  


    Here's what's missing from Email Marketing:


    - No db merge fields for nickname or salutation

    - Can't select multiple lists to send the email to 

    - Doesn't add an appeal to the constituent records for those that received the email - I can do a global add but a nice feature of OLX would show on the appeal whether the constituent opened the email

    - Can't see a list of people who opened the email

    - Doesn't update the records of unsubscribes and bounces the same way as OLX which IMO is better


    Hope this helps. 
  • Michele Stender
    Michele Stender ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    Hi! Thanks everyone for this great feedback on Email with RE NXT. There is a lot more to come in this new feature and we are just scratching the surface. If you don't mind me asking, I would really like to see some of these requests pop up in the ideas portal under RE NXT>Email. We know that we have to get a lot of what is mentioned in this thread done BUT I am trying to juggle priority order so having it voted in the ideas bank is SO helpful. I wanted to give a few updates. 


    -More merge fields and salutation are on the roadmap! I'd love to hear what other merge fields people would like to see. 

    -We aren't adding marketing emails to the constituent record yet but it is on our radar and high priority. 

    -You should be able to see a list of people who opened your emails. If you click on the email in the sent email tile, you will see a similar honeycomb that is in OLX. You click on those numbers to see a flyout. 
    33c9d33917312a0be847aa2f46d66aae-huge-sc
    More to come! 

    Michele Stender

    Product Manager
  • Mergen Peries
    Mergen Peries ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    I think some of these roadmap items have been released now, like salutation merge fields.  I've searched everywhere and can't find anything that explains what happens when you include a merge field that is empty.  Ie using Preferred Name (nickname) - they would not all have an entry.  Are there 'fallback' terms in email marketing NXT?


    Also, any updates to the recording of these emails on the constituent record?  This absence is stopping us from using this feature.
  • Jenny Katic
    Jenny Katic ✭
    Fifth Anniversary First Reply
    Good morning,


    We are just beginning our migration process to NXT. As it currently stands does Marketing Email able to replace Online Express? If not, what features are still missing?


    thanks for your help,

    Jenny
  • Aldera Chisholm 2
    Aldera Chisholm 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Sixth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hi Jenny,

    We migrated over last month. We have found that we need to stay in Online Express for our emails. Primarily because Online Express has the lovely "add this date to RE" for the email open/bounce etc info, and Marketing does not have that feature yet. 


    Marketing is much nicer for designing the emails, so I'm looking forward to that feature going live in Marketing.


    Cheers

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