Does anyone have a guide for tracking subscriptions (museum quarterly guide? Newsletter?). Readership falls into three subscribers: Donors (who get the publication as a benefit), complimentary issues (media, public relations), and paid subscribers. It's the paid subscribers where I'm stuck.
How do you record when someone's subscription has expired and they shouldn't get a publication? Let's say I was adding an Attribute (Paid Subscriber) on their record, and then noting an ACTION on their record (publication - mailed, fill in date, etc).
and querying on those with the attribute and the number of actions. If it a 4-issue, quarterly publication, the # of action items would be "0, 1, 2, or 3". A yearly one would be "0-11" etc.
Because there aren't always EXACT dates for the publications (it's quarterly, but the mail date isn't always the same), I need to make sure they get all 4 quarterly issues, but then stop after that (yes, I can send something to those who are on issue #3, reminding them...).
What if someone then re-subscribed later on? Query on the attribute AND the Attribute date? So many options/variables.
I'm sure someone else has a great plan that's been working for them.
Regards,
Joe Meehan
Have you considered leveraging constituent codes' date to and date from fields? Or perhaps the membership module, if you have it, since it's a subscription based.
jwant
We do have the membership module, but opted not to use that route, as they really aren't "members" per se if they just pay to subscribe to the publication. We have donors who we could have used the "benefits" but I'm fine with a dynamic query to tell me which donors qualify for the publications.
What we did decide was this:
Those who are paid subscribers will have an attribute on their record (Publication-Paid Subscriber) and the attribute date will be the last date of the month - one year in advance (i.e., if you subscribed on 5/18/08, the date entered would be 5.31.09).
Then we query on those records with the attribute, and the date being greater than or equal to TODAY
Since we globally add an action item (MI Review publication) when we send the publication, I can also query on TOTAL Number of Actions = 3, to see who potentially is on their “last” issue. Although someone who lapsed, and re-subscribed could have more than 4 action items on their record, so it’s not an exact science.
Joe
Sounds like you have game plan there.
Good luck!