Hello Fellow RE Users,

 We are (finally) about to launch an e-communications program. One dilemma we're running into is that we often have more than one email address for a constituent and aren't sure how to mark an email as the preferred email to use, and still keep our current designations of Email, Email Work, etc.

 I was wondering if anyone has some good suggestions on how to mark an email as the preferred email to use?

 Thanks,

Erica Peters, Annual Campaign Coordinator, Senior Services (Seattle)

We use the email type of e-mail for the preferred email, and secondary email, for the other email. This works for us.

We make a persons preferred email "Email" and any other "Email2"  we do not distinguish work, or home, just preferred and other.

Hi Erica,

We use Email for home and Email 2 for work.  We then enter whichever is the preferred email to the preferred address on the bio 1 tab.  So, even if the preferred address type is home, the email linked to that address might be their work address.

Shirley

We have an "Email Preferred" type that we use.  Additional email addresses are marked "Email 2" then "Email 3."  We also do not distinguish between work and home emails as we do with phone numbers. 

 Erin

 We have Preferred Email as well as school email, home email and business email. The preferred email is a duplicate of one of the others but it's easier to export that way since it varies from person to person what their preferred email address is. We are a college, all of our students receive a school email address while they are here and it is kept active after they leave. So we import it as part of the graduate import process.

 laura

Isn't the Email that is entered under the preferred address the preferred Email?  We have three email fields which we are condensing to two.  But we have three All Address Email categories and three Preferred email address categories.  Both groups have Email, Email Home and Email Work.  I'm planning on moving any other emails through a group update into the preferred email then we will cosolidate any other emails as secondary.  I'm hoping that works better for us. We had quite a bit of confusion when a director asked for emails and I asked which ones...so it goes.  I'll be chatting with RE support tomorrow to verify our plans I'll post again if I'm fuddled about the difference between preferred and other email addresses.  Thanks all

Lisa Smith

We use "Preferred E-Mail" and "CC E-mail" for personal email addresses and "Business E-mail" and "Business CC E-mail" for work addresses.We do not share email addresses, which allows up to 4 email addresses per person.

Hope this helps! 

Katie Reilly

Marist School

Atlanta, GA

www.marist.com

 Lisa,

 The staff here wants to see all phone numbers and email addresses on Bio 1 regardless of which address they "belong to". So on my record, Bio 1 will show my home address (my preferred address) along with my home phone #, my work phone number, my cell phone # (if I actually gave it to them), my home/private email address, my work email address and any other phone #s/email addresses associated with me. As a result we needed to create an email type of "Preferred" so any one looking at my record would know which email address to use.

I don't know if you only had one email address associated with the Preferred address if that one is considered Preferred by RE.

laura

 We too have all phone numbers and emails showing on the Bio 1 Tab.

Preferred email is: Email

Others are Email(w), Email(h).

We have asked Blackbaud to consider introducing two flags to the phone numbers

• Preferred (so you can tick which email and phone number the constituent prefers us to use)
• Distribution (a drop down table) so that we can mark who we are allowed to distribute a particular number to - for privacy reasons.  ie a volunteer may let us distribute their home phone number to other volunteers, the general public or only to staff.