We have several consituents who have requested to be only solicited once a year and we are looking to create a code to group them.  Does anyone have any best practices for this?  We considered using a solicit code, but it means having to remove another code when we do queries.  We also considered using an attribute and leaving them as "Do Not Solicit" but we wondered if this was the best use of an attribute.  Does anyone have any good suggestions?  We currently can count the constituents who request this on our hand, but I think we will be seeing more requests like this in the future.

 We use Mail Types. Our appeals are segmented out like most meeting specific sets of criterias in addition to those constituents with a particular mail type. If a constituent requests to be appeal once a year we would add the mail type of year end appeal and they would be appealed only at that time. If another constituent requests to be appealed once a year but in the spring then we add the mail type of spring appeal.

 It hasn't failed us yet. Good luck.

I would be interested in knowing more about your use of Mail Type attributes to segment mailings.  We, too, have issues with constituents who only want to be solicited once per year, at certain times of the year, only in reunion years, etc.  Have you previously used the Solicit codes and found that using the Mail Type attributes is better?

Solicit codes remove constituents from receiving specific pieces of mail. Solicit codes should be things like: Do not solicit, No Direct Mail, No Spring Direct Mail, No Year End Direct Mail, No Events, No Gala, etc. This way you can remove constituents from only from the specific mail they don’t want to receive. Solicit codes work in conjunction with Quick letters so that you can easily remove people with solicit codes from the mailing list you are creating. Laura

We use solicit codes which also indicate what time of year they prefer:  Spring Only, Fall Only.  This is working very well for us.