Best practice for dynamic Exclusion list

Nicoletta Landi

Hi, I am searching for the best practice in RE, for a very common problem: send marketing emails to major donors, but exclude them from fundraising emails. We are recoding our usage of “Do not contact” solicitation code to specifically mark those people who asked us not to be contacted. However, there is the subset of people what wish to stay in touch with the organisation but to which we do not want to send small giving requests. I do not want to introduce yet an extra solicitation code and we believe this will best achieved with a dynamic exclusion list of some sort. What criteria should I use to flag to our data selection team “Exclude this person from next fundraising”? Again, I could use a combo of constituent codes, but it is getting very messy. A dynamic flag to switch on and off could be easily used to re-adjourn the exclusion list before the next fundraising ask is sent. Has anybody solved this common problem? If so, how? Many thanks for your help Nicoletta

Kylea Johnson

@Nicoletta Landi I use a solicit code called “Do Not Solicit” for this. It works for a lot of cases, for example someone with the solicit codes “Do Not Solicit”, “Do Not Mail” AND “Do Not Phone” want no contact, while those with just the “Do Not Solicit” will get our other mailings, and those with “Do Not Mail” only will get digital communications of all kinds.

Faith Murray

@Nicoletta Landi, it is hard to answer your question without a bit more info.

If you are just wanting to exclude all major donors, then it should be fairly easy to make a dynamic list with something like “summary of total giving last fiscal year greater than $5,000”. Then you could merge/exclude that list out of your new mailing lists.

However, having worked in major gifts, I believe there will always be a few donors that you don't want receiving your regular mailings but don't fit your regular criteria. Maybe Billy Jones is a rich eccentric who gives a huge gift only once every three years. Maybe Zach has left a huge bequest for you in his estate and his fundraiser feels he shouldn't be solicited for additional gifts while he's alive. Maybe Bruce is a weirdo who sends you preachy junk mail every week with no money, thinking he's anonymized it by cutting off the return address; obsesses over your gift officer; and calls every month to ask if you're praying against him because the Chiefs beat the Chargers … but he loves being on your mailing list and wants to come visit. ? (Not making this up.)

In other words, even if you create a dynamic list for the bulk of your exclusions, you NEED a solicit code for “Do Not Solicit” people who YOU, the organization, have determined should not be solicited. It won't be used a lot. But you need it.

We ourselves have just one DNS solicit code which covers all reasons. Then we use a Custom Field/Attribute drop-down menu to delineate the reason we have curtailed their mailings. Our reasons range from “Donor requested - no solicitations” to “Staff designated - health/income” to “Staff designated - donor temperament”.

Kylea Johnson

@Faith Murray donor temperament LOL I'm stealing this. ?

Kristine Marvin

@Nicoletta Landi We use a few solicit codes. “Do not Solicit” removes somebody from all forms of solicitation, “Do not Mail” take them out of mailings and leaves them in emails, and “Do not Email” removes them from mailings and leaves them in emails. We also use suppression lists for to remove major donors from certain campaigns.

Damon Rosenthal

@Nicoletta Landi
I would be interested in feedback on this as well. We have a long list of Solicit Codes in RE, but we have a lot of constituents. We have some specific Opt Outs as well as Opt Ins. It is tedious managing, but it helps with filters so we don't upset folks by including or excluding when they specifically asked us to include or exclude.