Moving from Net Community to Constant Contact - solicit codes vs. requests no email vs. consent categories

Taisha Elliott

Hi all,

I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to steamline a Constituent list into constant contact. We have some accounts marked as Requests no email (from Net Community opt outs), some marked with the solicit code of do not email or do not contact. Now we'll be transitioning to consent categories from Constant Contact.

Is anyone else going through this transition and how are you handling the various codes?

I was able to make a static query into a constituent list and then exclude the various opt out codes, but it's messy and from what I understand won't update automatically with new constituents due to it being a static query.

I feel like I'm missing something as this shouldn't be so complicated.

Any advice or thoughts would be apprciated!

Taisha

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Taisha Elliott thanks for posting. I'm going to reach out to my contacts at Constant Contact to see if we can get you some assistance.

Tanner Patnode

Hi Taisha,

We are going through the integration right now and are experiencing similar confusion. Like you, we plan on doing almost all of our segmentation via RE lists because of how many fields we have that won't map over to CC. It sounds like we are ultimately going to need to create an immense amount of child accounts to accomplish the opt-outs the way that we were planning. There's significantly more to this than just that but clean data is our priority and as of now, we have many concerns.

Initially, we had planned to mirror our current solicit codes into the consent category but after a few conversations with CC, I think that is going to be the least of our concerns.

I know it has been a few weeks but did you get any more information on this? I would love to know what you found out on opt-outs as well as how you're sending over your lists from RE for different segments.

Thanks,

Tanner

Utah Valley University

Lena Payne

@Taisha Elliott is there any reason why you want to keep both - Requests no emails and do not email? In our database we have Do not email as they mean the same thing. In regards to Do not contact - we add all three negative consents - do not email, do not post, do not phone.

Thomas Nettesheim

Hello @Taisha Elliott , apologies for the delay. You're welcome to reach out to our support team if needed.

From our perspective, my understanding is that as long as the constituent is not in "Do not mail" they will be imported into Constant Contact. Then the consent categories can be attached to different Constant Contact accounts if you have multiple. This will allow people to receive different types of communication based on the category.

Taisha Elliott

@Lena Payne the only reason we want to keep both is because Requests no email is not available to filter on in a Constituent list so I couldn't easily exclude them. Otherwise, I would be very against it - i don't like having information in multiple places.

@Tanner Patnode this might sound convoluted, but it worked. Our newsletter goes to both Donor and Alumni constituent codes. In order to be able to exclude the solicit codes for the Constituent List, we marked anyone with 'Requests no email' on their account as 'Do not email' on the solicit code in order to exclude them. Then we marked anyone without an email with a solicit code of 'No email listed' in order to exclude them (we have a lot of old alumni without any emails unfortunately) - this step might not be necessary, but it made for a cleaner list. Then I included those that signed up for the newsletter that are neither Donor or Alumni. That seems to work.

I also set up Business Rules for the Consent options to automatically update the solicit codes if someone opted out, so our Constituent List in RE NXT would always be up to date.

@Thomas Nettesheim The only issue I'm having now is a Banner that is popping up that says that some of the emails/contacts won't be emailed. They fit the criteria for the list, so I'm not sure why that would happen. I reached out to support and they said to delete them and they would flow in from the Constituent List overnight, but it still keeps happening - so that I'm not clear on. The problem I'm having with support is that there is Blackbaud support and then Constant Contact support and which to choose depending on the issue. The issue seems to be the way they are working together, so any insight in who to talk to would be helpful.

Thanks everyone for replying and let me know if you hear anything further.

Taisha Elliott

To be clear we haven't used the Consent categories in the past, so we had to set up a way for them to work for us once we start sending emails from Constant Contact.