Important Email Reminders for Luminate Online

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With the holiday giving season kicking off and  #GivingTuesday right around the corner, we wanted to provide you with a consolidated list of the multitude of resources we have available, and to provide some pointers to help ensure your year-end efforts are successful. 
 


Resources Rundown:
 
  • Your first stop is our End of Year resource center which is a one stop shop for all your emailing needs.  Click here to go there now.
  • What has changed in Luminate Online™ email since last year?  Click here for more info.
 Reminders & Tips:

1.     Schedule your send as far in advance as possible: Everyone wants to send on December 31st.  All messages should be scheduled at least 24 hours ahead of send time, and once it's scheduled, try not to cancel. 
o    Bonus points: Schedule sends for “odd” times IE:  9:10 AM CST.  Please see the Resource Center for more tips and tricks as well as our email terms of use


2.     Warm up your list ahead of time:
If you plan to send to a larger-than-normal target audience, start sending messages to those addresses ahead of December 31st. Including these constituents in campaigns prior to your year-end campaign ensures they’re known addresses and can help increase deliverability and protect your sender reputation. 

3.     Make sure your email list is clean:
This should be an on-going process year round, but is most important at end of year when bad addresses can influence your sender reputation.  More info on how to best send from LO can be found here.

4.     Site Performance Enhancements:
Strongly consider taking steps to enhance site performance during your year-end campaign send(s).  Some best practices to adopt:
o    Disable the "Rebuilding Groups" functionality for groups that aren't in use. https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/65549
o    Not all S-Tags are supported in Luminate Online emails, know which ones you can use as others can cause issues for your send. https://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/guides/luminateonline/stags.pdf
o    Avoid nesting non-static groups. Having a query based group where the query references other non-static groups can cause extremely high group rebuild times. https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/65549

5.     Pre-December 31st testing:
Test in advance of the big send so that you can avoid hiccups and take advantage of the results you learn for December 31st.
o    A/B Testing is a good best practice but it is NOT recommended on December 31st.  We recommend that all messages be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance, and A/B testing should happen in the weeks prior so you can use the results to your advantage.
o    Always make sure to preview and test your email messages before you schedule and send.  Ensure that test emails contain the same info as your main message and avoid blank message sends.

 All of the above tips, plus many more, can be found in our End of Year Resource Center

 We are grateful for each of you this holiday season and we wish you all the very best!

 Happy Holidays from your Blackbaud family
News Blackbaud Luminate OnlineĀ® Blog 11/30/2015 12:31pm EST

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