How do I send a 2nd email solicitation only to people that did not give to the 1st email?

Hi Danielle,

There are several different ways to do this in Convio.  If you have a donation form that is dedicated to this specific campaign and if you've associated that donation form with a group in Convio so that every donor who gives via that form is added to a Convio Group, then you can use that group as a suppression group (add them to the "do not send" audience) when you get the follow-up message ready for delivery.

In some cases, however, you might want to "cast a broader net" and not just suppress individuals who donated via a specific donation form, but anyone who has donated online since you sent the last message.  In that case, you would create a new, query-based group that looks for individuals who have given since the date of the message you sent.  The steps for setting up your query-based group are very similar to the instructions I provided on how to identify new constituents in your Cons360 database.

The difference, in this case, is that you want to query on a "Field Type" of "Transaction Information" and a "Field" called "Last Transaction Date".  This is information stored on each constituent's record telling you the date of their most recent online gift recorded in Convio.  Just query on all constituents who have a "Last Transaction Date" on or after the date of when you sent your email message.  Then, once you've saved and successfully run this query, you'll want to use the query to create a group (i.e. a query-based group).  This query-based group is your suppression group for your follow-up message.

Please don't hesitate to post back if you have follow-up questions!

-patrick

Danielle :

Patrick - I've set up the query, but it's been 'running' for 5 minutes. Should it take this long?

Hi Danielle - Five minutes sounds a bit long, but it can sometimes take a few minutes for a query to run and produce your results, especially mid-day if Convio's servers are seeing a lot of activity in general.  If the query just isn't running to conclusion and providing results, I would call Convio support or submit an online support ticket so that our technical team can check to see whether queries in general are running slowly.

-patrick

Jessica :

Patrick

Hello, I have a question also about suppression lists for a three part eoy solicitation.  I thought I could trace how you and Adam set this up last year but it is not clear as the audience is empty from last years eoy campaign.  I want to send the first message to everyone on our email list, the second is a card and should go to everyone but it has a split message for donors and non donors, I can not figure out how to do this in set up.  The third should only go to peole who have not yet donated and I like the idea of casting a larger net of everyone who donated online between the 10th when message one goes and the 30th when message three goes.  Can you help me with this?

Thanks,

Jessica Curtis

Hi Jessica,

We often configure the audience at the message level rather than the campaign level.  This is why when you look at last year's campaign, you're probably not seeing an audience set up in the campaign.

One way to see how we set things up last year is to go to each message delivery and look at the delivery detail.  The delivery detail is going to tell you which groups were targeted to receive the message and which groups were suppressed.  If you note these settings for last year's deliveries, you can apply them to your emails as you set them up to go out this year.

To look at delivery details:

1. From the Admin homepage, go to Email > Email Campaigns > "Campaigns" tab
2. Click "Manage" for last year's campaign
3. Click on the "Deliveries" tab.  When this page loads, you'll see a list of all the messages that have been delivered. 
   
4. You can then click "Review" for any specific message.  The review screen will show lists of "Target Groups" and "Do Not Email Groups".  These will reflect the audience settings that we used in the past

Note that some content for donors vs. non-donors may have been managed as conditional content within a single email message.  Increasingly in the Go! program, we now just create completely separate messages with distinct audiences so that this conditionalization is as clear as possible when clients try to repeat this work on their own.

Once you've identified your target audiences, you can use them to decide who gets the message when you configure the delivery.  This is possible by clicking on "Target Groups" under related actions in the left side of your screen as you are sending (or scheduling) the message.  When you set it up this way, you're configuring the audience for that specific message - this setup does not apply to other messages you might send in the future within this same campaign.

-patrick

Jessica :

Patrick thanks, I found the audience information.   I have scheduled my first delivery for tomorrow with everyone receiving it.  The second one is scheduled for the 21st which has the donor/non donor messages, I do not understand how to make it send correctly to each of those groups.  Last years messages do not show a suppression or split list, does the system know this on it's own?  If not how do I tell it this information?  The third message goes out on the 30th, I have set up a query of all donations between the 10-30 , how do I make this a group.  I am assuming I would create a group of these folks place them in the do not mail - is this correct?  I went to make a group but can't figure out how to make it a query group.

Thanks

Hi Jessica,

You're almost there!!  So, when you run your query and get a list of constituents that fit your criteria, you should then see a thumbs-up icon in the upper-right corner of your screen:

Click this icon or the adjacent text ("Use Query") and you'll be given the option to either tie the query to a group ("Create a Group") or to perform a mail merge.  You want to create a group - this group will then be a query-based group that you can set to rebuild itself when you send your message.

On the donor vs. non-donor eCard messages ... unfortunately, that's not something the Convio system just knows to do automatically.  I recommend creating two different eCards (one for donors and one for non-donors) and sending those two eCards to distinct audiences.  You might set up another query or pair of queries for the audiences for these eCards.  Since you have Common Ground, you should have values in your "External Last Gift Date" field - this contains offline gift date information.  That, combined with Convio's built-in "Online Last Gift Date" can help you identify everyone who has donated to SAMA (and has an email address) in 2009.  You could then send these folks the donor version of your eCard and everyone else the non-donor version.

Alternatively, you could set up all your groups in Common Ground, map them over into Convio, and then use those groups as the donor and non-donor audiences.

-patrick

Danielle :

How do I make it so the query refreshes every day? I am heading out of town and won't be here to make sure the query is up to date.

Hi Danielle,

If your group is created based on a query, you can instruct the group to refresh on a daily/weekly/monthy/yearly basis. Go to the group and check the box that says "Periodically rebuild group membership?" and then also select an interval.

Alternatively (and my preferred method), you can tell a group based on a query to rebuild just prior to a message sending. This is the best way to ensure that your group is absolutely up to date before a message goes out the door. When you're selecting your target audiences and Do Not Mail groups for a particular message and scheduling the message to send, you'll see in the left navigation that you have an option for Rebuilding groups before delivery. Click that link and then make sure the boxes are checked for your query groups. I usually make sure all my groups rebuild before sending, just to be safe. You'll notice that not all groups can be rebuilt, but all query groups most certainly can and should be rebuilt just prior to sending.

Post back if you aren't seeing this in your admin tools.

rachael