Appeal/source set up

You need to set up your sources to give you the information you are looking for.

To give an example: You are doing a big mailing, and you want to track the responses of your board members, subscribers, lapsed donors, or some other type of constituent. It might help if you segregate the groups you are tracking by source (so break them up in your extraction so that they create different sources when the extraction runs). So, when you are planning a mailing, or a big solicitation, it doesn’t hurt to really think about how you want to track responses before you set up your lists.

One thing we’ve done in Development is create sources for certain things that we want to track easily. Memorial or honorary gifts get a source unique to the honoree. So the source might be “2014 Memorial-Scott and Mary Smith’s Wedding” or something like that.

I’ve heard many people on the marketing side, over time, say that they found themselves simplifying their source structure. They don’t necessarily care which particular ad someone is responding to when purchasing a ticket—particularly when source tracking is a bit of an inexact science. We send out an e-blast, and we get a bunch of web orders and, possibly, contributions—but the purchasers don’t always click through the e-blast, adding the nice tracked source. I can still see that they got the e-blast, and that they opened it, even if, later, they purchased a ticket using the generic web source.

Sources need to be simple enough to use well, but granular enough to give you the information you are looking for.

Lucie

______________________________
Lucie Spieler
IT Development and Training Manager

FLORIDA GRAND opera

You need to set up your sources to give you the information you are looking for.

To give an example: You are doing a big mailing, and you want to track the responses of your board members, subscribers, lapsed donors, or some other type of constituent. It might help if you segregate the groups you are tracking by source (so break them up in your extraction so that they create different sources when the extraction runs). So, when you are planning a mailing, or a big solicitation, it doesn’t hurt to really think about how you want to track responses before you set up your lists.

One thing we’ve done in Development is create sources for certain things that we want to track easily. Memorial or honorary gifts get a source unique to the honoree. So the source might be “2014 Memorial-Scott and Mary Smith’s Wedding” or something like that.

I’ve heard many people on the marketing side, over time, say that they found themselves simplifying their source structure. They don’t necessarily care which particular ad someone is responding to when purchasing a ticket—particularly when source tracking is a bit of an inexact science. We send out an e-blast, and we get a bunch of web orders and, possibly, contributions—but the purchasers don’t always click through the e-blast, adding the nice tracked source. I can still see that they got the e-blast, and that they opened it, even if, later, they purchased a ticket using the generic web source.

Sources need to be simple enough to use well, but granular enough to give you the information you are looking for.

Lucie

______________________________
Lucie Spieler
IT Development and Training Manager

FLORIDA GRAND opera