Mail Series Part 2: Creating letters in the Mail Module

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By this point in the process for the Raiser’s Edge, we have our mailing set up to include the appropriate donors and we have selected the fields we want to include in our merged letter per the first blog post of this series.

When creating a letter in the Mail Module, we use the Mail Merge Wizard. To access the wizard, open your mailing and select to Send to Word Merge Wizard. This is necessary in order to access the merge document.

Once the Mail Merge Wizard is opened, click Next to export the data. When creating and editing letters, we will want to select No for the prompt to mark the gifts as acknowledged. This will give us the flexibility to run the mail merge as many times as needed.
  • If the message “No records meet specified criteria” appears, make sure to mark one of your gifts as Not Acknowledged. We need to have at least one letter that needs to be acknowledged in order to access and edit the merge document.
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Next comes the decision of how many different letters we want this group to receive. Is each donor in this group receiving the same type of letter? If each person receiving a letter will be receiving the same letter, then we will want to create a simple mail merge. Simple  = same. If there a different letters for the donors included, then we will create a conditional mail merge because the letter the donor receives is conditional based on some field.

When selecting conditional, we will also need to determine what the letter is conditional upon. Does the fund on the gift determine which letter a donor receives? Or is the it Letter code assigned on the gift or maybe the gift amount? We will want to make sure this field is selected on this step of the wizard. If the field is not present, we need to add it to the Fields to Include tab back in the mailing parameters (information about setting up your mailing is located in Part 1 of this series).

If all donors will be receiving the same letter, select a simple mail merge. After making your choice for simple or conditional, click next to Create your merge document or New Document. This will open a word merge document. At the top, you will see a file name similar to BB##_#.doc. This is where we will create our letters.
 
 
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We can begin by typing in the letter and inserting merge fields from the Raiser’s Edge. These fields can be found on the Add-ins tab, where you will see an option to Insert Raiser’s Edge merge field. This table is populated from the Fields to Include Tab that we set up in the mailing parameters. We can enter in the merge fields as needed and insert any images and text. Once you have completed your letter to your donors, we want to go to the Add-ins tab and select Save and Return to RE7. This will bring us back to the Word Merge Wizard for our final steps!

Once back in the Raiser’s Edge, select Next to find the option to select the location to save. By clicking on the ellipsis, we can browse to a folder or location and click Save. Last, but not least, we will want to click Finish in the Mail Merge Wizard. This final step will export all your data and merge your letters to contain the donor information to be folded, addressed, stamped and mailed!

Working on a year-end donor statement? There are some great resources specific to this task including our KnowledgeBase article full of screenshots and a class that teaches you how to prepare these: Raiser’s Edge: Year-End Cover Letters and Donor Statements. We also offer great classes on the Raiser’s Edge: Fundamentals Mail 1 and Raiser’s Edge: Mail 2. Be sure to check them out for other tips and tricks!
News Raiser's Edge® Blog 01/07/2016 8:30am EST

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