Tagging details of a mailing in the Appeals tab

Kristen Miles:
Hello, We launched a 2-year campaign at the beginning of this year. Our 2 major activities have been a launch event and a mailing. Our appeals tab were not being used effectively to track gift details by previous staff members, so we decided to use the appeal code to tag the activities of our launch event and our mailing. An appeal called "Launch" was created and in the "Response" column we tracked the constituent's RSVP status-whether they were invited, attended, etc. We used the same system with our mailing. We found that so far this has been successful because we can pull a query quickly and specify by appeals and/or responses. As back up, we have an Excel Master spreadsheet of the mailing list. I would like to be able to enter more of the information from Master spreadsheet so it's saved safely in RE. Specifically, I would like to be able to record which of our staff members wrote personalized notes for the mailing. If I put this information in the "Comment's box, might it be pulled into a future query? Or does anyone have any other best practice suggestions as to where I can record this information? I realized that many RE users generate mailings using the Mail tab. We only pull queries to generate a mailing list. We produce the mailings on our own, which is why a lot of mailing information is not entered in RE. Thank you for your help and suggestions in advance!

Maureen,

I don't believe you can query on the appeal comment field.  It doesn't seem to be listed in the query criteria options.  Package has an attribute with a comment field that's a query option but I don't see one for Appeal.

Not sure where to suggest you record this.  But if it were me, I would want it to be a field that uses a table for data entry consistency.  Are you using the Package field?  I know it's not intended use but it could be used as a table if you're not utilizing it.  Can't think of any other options right now.

Hope you get some helpful replies from those who use Appeals/Packages more than we do.

Michael Sherman:
I use the Assigned Appeal Comment to indicate which staff member hand signs an appeal of adds a personal note. The comment field is available in queries under "Assigned Appeals" but not under "Gifts/Appeals". I've done reports showing how many and whose hand signed appeals got responses. Like JoAnn, I too would prefer a field that utilizes a table and maybe "package" is something you might want to take a look at.

Kristen Miles:
Hello, We launched a 2-year campaign at the beginning of this year. Our 2 major activities have been a launch event and a mailing. Our appeals tab were not being used effectively to track gift details by previous staff members, so we decided to use the appeal code to tag the activities of our launch event and our mailing. An appeal called "Launch" was created and in the "Response" column we tracked the constituent's RSVP status-whether they were invited, attended, etc. We used the same system with our mailing. We found that so far this has been successful because we can pull a query quickly and specify by appeals and/or responses. As back up, we have an Excel Master spreadsheet of the mailing list. I would like to be able to enter more of the information from Master spreadsheet so it's saved safely in RE. Specifically, I would like to be able to record which of our staff members wrote personalized notes for the mailing. If I put this information in the "Comment's box, might it be pulled into a future query? Or does anyone have any other best practice suggestions as to where I can record this information? I realized that many RE users generate mailings using the Mail tab. We only pull queries to generate a mailing list. We produce the mailings on our own, which is why a lot of mailing information is not entered in RE. Thank you for your help and suggestions in advance!