Merged query operators

Jolynn Uyehara

I'm going to try and explain this as best as I can. Blackbaud support was unable to help me so I am reaching out to you - the community.

I am creating a mailing list for our mail house (outside source) to use for our upcoming giving appeal. We are segmenting our letters by constituents (Alumni, Current Parents, Past Parents, Staff, etc…). I ran lists based on each constituent code (6 different ones) and saved it in database as static query. Here is where I am running into issues. There are some constituents that have more than one constituent code, therefore are appearing on more than one list. I only want to send them one letter based on the hierarchy of constituent codes. Ex: Joe Smith is an Alumni and Current Parent, but Alumni is first based on the hierarchy so I need to remove him from the Current Parent list. When I do a merged query, it's not giving me all the constituents in that category. I tried running tests on all the operators and the results were not what I needed.

Can someone suggest another way?

Thank you!

Alan French

Hi Jolynn, I've not used this method myself but I think you could use Quick Letters for this. In the Segment section, you add all your queries in the correct order, then when you run the letter process you can generate new queries with the constituents who fall into that segment (they will only be in 1 segment each).

There are better instructions on the knowledgebase here:

Karen Diener

@Alan French:

Hi Jolynn, I've not used this method myself but I think you could use Quick Letters for this. In the Segment section, you add all your queries in the correct order, then when you run the letter process you can generate new queries with the constituents who fall into that segment (they will only be in 1 segment each).

There are better instructions on the knowledgebase here:

I 100% agree with Alan on this. I've used QuickLetters many times and this is a great way to let the software do the work for you.

While you don't need to use package codes, that makes a lot of sense to do so from what you have said about this mailing. If you set up a package code on the appeal record that equates to your constituency code, it will allow for a really easy Appeal Summary report. While running the segmentation, checks the boxes to add the Appeal and Package to each constituent record and update the number solicited as well. I would wait until you are running a final list to do that though!

Feel free to ask more questions! I think QuickLetters is a really valuable tool that a lot of people don't know about or understand, so I am happy to share some love about it!

Karen

Darlene LeVielle

@Jolynn Uyehara @iparlin@ithaca.edu

Hi Jolynn, We have been discussing using the appeal package processing for segmentation in the way it has been described here as a possible solution as well and hope to try that soon. I also wonder if Query List might be helpful where you can add and/or remove lists in a hierarchical manner. -Darlene

Barbara Kunkel

@Darlene LeVielle - Karen and Alan are correct. I use Quick Letters for the segmentation tab. I enter the Queries in hierarchy order with a new Query name. This will solve your issue.

Christine Cooke

@Jolynn Uyehara
Run your queries in their hierarchal order through QuickLetters Segmentaton tab in the Mail section. Doing this de-dupes folks with more than one constituent code and outputs the queries.