Prepping Luminate Online For The New Year 3088

Prepping Luminate Online For The New Year

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Happy New Year! I always take a day soon after the new year to clean up and prepare my household for the year. I spend time sorting, filing, or recycling all of those papers that have accumulated on my desk over the year (where do they come from?). I set up the new file folders I'll need for the coming year, for example for tax papers and medical bills. I also go through my filing cabinets and decide if there's anything that I no longer need to keep. I even go through the folder of my children's artwork and recycle some of it (let's be honest, do I really need five drawings of an octopus with a moustache?), even if it was made "just for you, Mommy."

Now that the end of year has passed and the spring event season is not yet upon us, it's a good idea to take the time to go over your Luminate Online site and do a general clean-up and preparation for the new year.

Since cleaning can sometimes be overwhelming, here are eight great ideas to get you started.

Duplicate Management

When was the last time you checked for duplicates in your system? To check for duplicates, you can run the Duplicate Finder task or use Duplicate Management, both found under Data Management. Where possible, resolve those duplicates by using Luminate Online or your linked database (such as Raiser's Edge or Luminate CRM). If you have a large number of duplicates, come up with a strategy to resolve them over time.

Hard Bounces

ce327aca0c8d65d827bf717120541dc1-originaRun a query to find all of your constituents who have an email status of Bad (Hard Bounce). To get the new email addresses of those constituents, try to reach out to them in other ways. If you cannot reach them, consider inactivating their accounts, especially if they have had no recent activity on your site.

Campaigns, Events, and Pages

Make sure you've set up your annual fund campaign, monthly newsletter campaign, or any other yearly campaigns that your organization uses in both Donation Management and Email Campaigns. While you're there, see if there are any old campaigns, forms, or emails that you can archive.

TIP: If you use TeamRaiser or PageBuilder, check your events and pages to see if there are any items you need to update, inactivate, or archive.

Surveys

All surveys have an expiration date. Check the expiration date of the surveys you are still using on your site, and change the date of any that may be expiring soon. To find the expiration date of a survey, in the Actions column next to the name of the survey click Edit and then skip to the Publish Survey step. Confirm or update the Survey End Date and click Finish.

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This is also a good time to update current surveys and archive old ones.

Image and Document Library

Just like I go through that folder of my children's artwork, you might take some time to go through your image and document libraries. Are there images and documents that can be archived, deleted, or refreshed? How many versions of your logo do you really need? An archived image will still show up on web pages and in emails, but will not be accessible from the Luminate Online WYSIWYG editor. Images must be archived before they can be deleted.

Rebuildable Groups

Rebuilding a group can use a large amount of system resources. Check your rebuildable groups list (found under Constituent360 > Groups > Rebuilding Groups List) and see which groups are set to rebuild. Are there any you are no longer using or don't need to rebuild at all or as frequently?

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To remove rebuilding, simply click Disable Rebuilding. To change the frequency, click Edit Group, and then select the appropriate option under Periodically Rebuild Group Membership?.

If you realize you do need a group to be "rebuildable" later this year or at a different frequency, you can always go back and change it. And remember, these dynamic groups are always rebuilt before an email is sent, so you can set the rebuild frequency to yearly for groups you'll be using for email communications; and Luminate Online will still send the email to everyone who should be in the group.

End-of-Year Thank You's

And don't forget to thank all of your end-of-year donors. If you haven't yet, check out the EOY Series: Gratitude And Cultivation blog post for tips, tricks, and strategies.

Training

One more way to prepare for the new year is to prepare your mind with Blackbaud University's Luminate Online courses. Refer to the Luminate Online datasheet for the full list of offerings. We continually make changes throughout the year, so you'll want to bookmark the link for quick reference. Also, now is a great time to get Luminate Online Fundamentals certified.

P.S.
In case you were wondering what an octopus with a moustache (surrounded by TIE-Fighters?) looks like, here is my five-year-old's interpretation.

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News Blackbaud Luminate Online® Blog 01/11/2017 10:14am EST

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2 Comments
Hi Brittany,

It depends. If you are close to the top of your pricing band and you do not think these people will interact with your organization again, then there would certainly be a benefit in making their records inactive. If you think some of these people may come back, then I would leave them.
Thanks, Allison.

Your recommendation on hard bounces got me thinking - if we're already removing all hard bounces from our email sends, is there a benefit to moving those records over as inactive in the system?

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