Am I missing something in Online Express e-mail setup?

roger berg · August 2015

We moved from Constant Contact to Online Express very recently. Recently enough, in fact, that I haven't worked with events and donation forms yet - just e-mail marketing. I was hoping that I could filter Organization contacts in much the same way I do in regular mailings - i.e. filters to include/exclude specific CONTACT types and/or attributes. Unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, the only built-in option for filtering Organizational contacts is based on the RELATIONSHIP type which does me no good at all. That leaves me with having to add another layer to my queries to do the filtering there based on the attributes I use in regular mailings, which seems the opposite of what should be happening. So, am I missing something, or am I correct in thinking that is this a functionality that BB should add to OLX?

Shannon Slater · August 2015

Hi Roger, I too have just started using OLX and find that query based E-Blasts are a wonderful alternaitve to constant contact. There are many advantages, including easy editing of hard bounce back emails or opt outs, stastical tracking, quick appeal upload and tracking of "receive, open, click and gave" results.

If I understand your concern correctly, I would try this, create an exclusion query that filters to "include" the "relationships/contact type" that you want to exclude (because you want the query to identify the contact types to be removed), then use "merge queries" tool; select your inclusion query as the "primary query" and the "exclusion query" containing the contact types to be removed, then use "merge operator=sub" and you will have a final query that includes records identified in the inclusion query and excluding the contact types identified in the exclusion query. In OLX, choose the query to send the E-Blast to, it will have excluded those organization contact types.

If this is not helpful, I apologize and hopefully after some of us use OLX and find roadblocks, Blackbaud will send fixes. All the best, Shannon

roger berg · August 2015

Thanks Shannon - that's helpful, and yes - I LOVE the functionality in OLX that I did not have with Constant Contact. I was (am?) hoping that there could be a better filter so that I could e-mail using the exact same queries that I already use for mailings without having to do additional work within the query to accomplish on the back end what the mail feature does on the front.

It's really only a pain (mail and e-mail) when it comes to organizations with several contacts.

Roger

Am I missing something in Online Express e-mail setup?

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