Automatic Thank You Emails and Campaigns?

Cory Sytsma

Hi,

New to eTapestry, stepping in to help with existing implementation. I have 2 main questions:

1. Can you have an automatic email sent, or just automatic process, when a donation is made, or I guess more specifically, when a journal entry is created for a donation amount?
2. Is there any concept of a Campaign, like setup an email to be sent every week based upon a query?

Or does everything have to be manually initiated? Manually run the query to get names, then manually send the email?

If anyone does this outside of eTapestry, would love to hear how you set it up.

Thanks,

Cory

Haley Gotfrid

Hi Cory,

I can answer question 1 of your inquiry. If you are using DIY forms through blackbaud merchant services/eTapestry to get people to donate, there is a way that thank you letters can be automatic. Go to Management →DIY Forms →'Edit' (the left-most icon in the top right-hand corner of the form you want to send automatic thank you letters from) → Settings (top left hand corner of the form page) → Email → Click the checkbox next to ‘Send the Donor a confirmation email’ and then select the communication template you want to use as a thank you letter. This will trigger the thank you letter to be sent automatically in place of the automatic confirmation email that eTap has.

This way supposes that you have already set up a thank you letter as a communications template in eTap. If you need help doing that, I can show you how. The only drawback to this solution is that eTapestry doesn't currently acknowledge the donor confirmation email as an official communication from the organization, so it won't log the contact in the journal. If you want to log the contact, you, unfortunately, need to send a batch communication, and currently in eTap there is no way to send batches instantaneously (to the best of my knowledge). It's a tradeoff for sure, but my org has been doing it the above way for any donations that come through online via DIY eTap forms, and it has worked well for us.

If, however, your gift comes in offline, the way to send a note as soon as you enter the gift, and without running a whole batch of thank you letters is to go into the Journal and click on the gift. Then, at the bottom of the screen, click on ‘create documents’ and select the template you want to send directly to the donor.

Hope this helps!

Haley