Email from A to Z

Matt,

Is this for TeamRaiser events? If so, I will move this post to the TeamRaiser board. If this is for TeamRaiser, are you looking for info on using TeamRaiser coaching emails or are you interested in participant recruitment email campaigns? We recently did a webinar on TeamRaiser participant recruitment and past-participant communication. You can find all of the webinar info and free downloadable kit on our Community Webinars page under the Events section. It's the two webinars on communication strategy. You can download the kit by clicking the wrench icon (). 

Hope this helps!

Kent

Matt Devine:

Hi Kent,

 

Yes, this is for TeamRaiser events. And I am interested in both using coaching emails and participant recruitment email campaigns.

 

Thank you,

 

Matt

Thanks Matt. I have moved your post to the TeamRaiser board. Members of our TeamRaiser team monitor this board and they will see your post. 

As for emails, I definitely recommend taking a look at the webinar I mentioned above for the recruitment emails. There's a big emphasis on retention communication in there with some step-by-step instructions on how to create groups of past participants and communicate to them.

As for coaching emails, different organizations take different approaches for these. Some orgs simply use the automated "7 Day", "14 Day", "21 Day", etc. emails for this while others like to use the regular Email Campaigns tool to handle this communication. Really it comes down to your preference which is usually dictated by your available capacity and how segmented you want to get. While the automated emails are nice, sometimes they just don't allow for the level of reporting that some event managers want to see. Plus there is the instance that every participant won't make it through all of the automated emails because their registration was too close to the event date. 

Some of the TeamRaiser experts will hopefully contribute here but I would recommend that you take a look at your number of messages you would have to manage outside of the TR tool. With 40 yearly events it is obvious that managing email campaigns for each one would be a monster of a task and therefore simply using the automated emails for each event may be the best option. One thing you might consider is utilizing both. You can provide simple fundraising tips in the automated email but use the Email Campaign tool to send very specific email that "speaks" to the participant based on where they are or how much they have to go to reach their goal. You can even use the Email Campaign emails to communicated comparison data such as: "You sent XX number of emails last year but have only sent XX number this year." Then go on to tell them how on average it takes as many as six emails to get one gift and therefore the more emails they send, the more money they'll raise. There are several S-tags that you can use specifically in TeamRaiser communication that will render dynamic content specific to each participant. 

As an organization with so many events, you may consider asking your Account Manager if you can get a TeamRaiser consultant for just an hour-long call to talk about ways you can optimize your communication. Not knowing the structure of your events or the history of your communication makes it a little difficult to give you a definitive recommendation but with a consultant you could quickly share this kind of information and they could easily compare it to other organizations of your size and share what those organizations did that worked well and what didn't. 

Like I said, there are many ways that different orgs setup their communication and many different strategies. The key is finding the best configuration that supports your strategy.

I hope this helps. I'll definitely see if someone from our TeamRaiser team can chime in.

Kent

Matt Devine:

Hi Kent,

 

Yes, this is for TeamRaiser events. And I am interested in both using coaching emails and participant recruitment email campaigns.

 

Thank you,

 

Matt

Matt,

Welcome to the wonderful world of TeamRaiser events. What you're describing is a little complex, but very doable.

There are a few different ways you can do this. If these are events you host year after year in the same place, though, this is probably the best approach:

I would use something like this tool to get a list of zip codes that are within a given radius of your event. Once you've done that, you can build a periodically-generating query group that adds everybody on that zip code list to a group of your choosing. Then just make that group your target audience when you're setting up your e-mail delivery.

If this is all totally foreign, I'd recommend starting off with a few courses on the Convio LearnCenter for context. The "Creating a Welcome Series in Luminate Online" and "CLO 201w: Data Management: Import/Export, Query & Duplicates" courses should get you started.

Unfortunately there's no way that I'm aware of to set these groups up in a more automated fashion, but you can use the same query-generated group year after year after year. That's a perk.

Some organizations will also use the congressional district field on the C360 contact record in place of the zip code, but I prefer zip code as congressional districts vary so widely in size.

Hope this helps!

Matt Devine:
Hi Steve,



When entering the zip codes in the query (for example, I have 192 for one of my events), do I have to create a new field clause for each one?



For example...

Field Type: Address Field:Zip



(then)



field of: Home Address equals #####



or can I add multiple zip codes in a field clause?



For example...

Field Type: Address Field:Zip



(then)



field of: Home Address (contains or begins with) #####,#####,#####



Thanks!

Ouch! 192 clauses is brutal!

I tested this out afresh just to be sure, and I'm afraid you do have to build each clause one a time. Instead of having "Home Address Contains XXXXX,YYYYY,ZZZZZ", you'll have set up one clause for XXXXX, YYYYY, and ZZZZZ.

But at least you'll only have to do this once rather than rebuilding each year after year after year. 

One thing: would recommend using "contains" instead of "equals" as as you set up your logic. That way if someone has a zip code+4, your query won't exclude them.

Now, if you're only doing an event once or if building 192 clauses is (understandably!) way too much, you have another option.

Pull a list of constituents from Common Ground who might plausibly wind up on your list, making sure to to grab their e-mail addresses and zip codes, and export that to a spreadsheet. If you're hosting an event in New Hampshire, for example, you might pull residents from New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. You'll winnow that list down in the next step.

Use a little vlookup magic to see if their zip matches the list of zip codes you already have. Make the e-mail address the value to return if vlookup finds a match.

Then, follow the instructions on this page to upload them to a group. That group can become your target audience. Voila!

Hope this helps!