How do you handle e-mail blasts on a constituent's record?  Do you track it as an Action, Attribute or an Appeal?  If not, how do you track this information.  If so, please indicate whether it's a constituent Action, constitutent Attribute or constituent Appeal.  We would like to simply know what constituent responded to the e-mail blasts that we plan to send.  We plan to send different e-mail blasts throughout the year.  We would later want to query on this information and we're wondering which one works out best.

 Thanks much,

Denise

If a response = something other than a gift you would need to develop your own system to track this.  The options are varied depending on your needs.

Mellissa

One question

We are getting ready to go with mass e-mails (and mass ask). Problem that I see is that we are going to e-mail at least once per month and if we start adding appeal for each ask we will add at least 12 appeals just for e-mails (aside regular mail). My concern that we will be clogged with appeals.

I was suggesting to have one appeal for e mail donations and than every time when we send mass e mail we will add action with description ask ( ie critical needs, surgery equipment  etc, like you mentioned in your post) . I know it is not going to give clear picture who donated for which e mail but that’s but there is always margin for error.

Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks

Have you thought about using packages with the appeal.  When you run an appeal performance report you can tell it to include package information.

I would use Package as well.  Your appeal could be Email while you could have a package code representing each month of the year...example  Jan09 or you could list as 0109   Feb09 or list as 0209  ...that way when you pull to report on the appeal of Email you can see who was sent out a notice from which month.

If you are using packages then I assume you are going to record in the appeals tab each time you send a different email (or package), correct?  How would that be different than adding 12 different appeals?  It still adds 12 rows to someone's appeals tab and they will look way too similar. I actually think it would be more confusing and give you less ability to query and report.

I would recommend adding 12 different appeals and creating a new giving page (in NetSolutions) to go each ask (with the appeal automatically stamped on each new gift) so you can very accurately which email they clicked on to make their gift.  Assuming you are not sending the same email 12 times a year you will want to know very accurately which emails produced more giving than others so you can adjust your technique to get the best results.  This is EXACTLY what appeals tracking is for. 

If each email will be different (sent at a different time and with a different message) then I recommend completely separate appeals.  If they are variations of the same sent at the same time then I recommend one appeal with different packages.

BB's user guide states:  "An appeal is a solicitation that brings in your gifts."  Assuming each of your e-mail blasts asks for a donation, they are each an appeal.  To reflect it as other than that because it feels "cluttered" or "complicated" would not be an accurate reflection of how you propose to solicit gifts from each constituent.  Another poster stated "My concern is that we will be clogged with appeals" and you will be ... but maybe that's the point.  To help us project how our constituents will feel as well ...

I agree in some respects but not fully.  My assumpion and hope is that a monthly email "solicitation" which presumably goes to the same constituent group each time would hopefully be more of a newsletter/update type of message with an opportunity to give rather than a true hard solicitation.  I believe that there are such things as hard asks and soft asks.  I believe that both types of asks can and should be recorded as appeals. 

A combination of hard and soft asks makes a well rounded appeal program and good appeals tracking will help you figure out what is working and where, maybe you need to redirect your efforts to maximize your results.  I most likely would not recommend 12 hard asks a year of your constituents but some organizations have found that as often as every 6 weeks gave them their best results (after testing it had the best retention rate and highest avg. gift amount) but many places that frequency is not going to work. 

What will work?  You have to start and slowly build, test, readjust, test, segment, and test.  Every organization and constituent base is different and it takes time to get data to show where you need to go and where you need to stay away from.  

I do not recommend surveying donors because everyone will say "send me only one letter a year" but that statistically always gives you the lowest return.  Direct mail is like marketing - you have to go with what actually produces results despite what individuals think works.  If you asked Coke drinkers if Coke should spend $3 million on a superbowl ad plus millions more on their annual avertising many would say NO I'll still drink coke without it and maybe the price could come down if you didn't spend that $$.  But Coke is not stupid.  If they could not spend that money and still keep their sales numbers they would have done it long ago and made tons more money.  They have certainly done studies and compiled data to prove that the investment pays for itself plus or else they would not be doing it. 

Each of us needs to find our own balance of how to continue to stay in front of your donors, not appear too greedy, educate them on the issues of your org and provide them with opportunities to give in order to retain your donors and bring in the money you can and should be able to bring in.