Mail Merge Automation

Hannah Lee · December 2022

Hello,

We are amping up our mail solicitations. A problem that we ran into while completing mail merge is that we spent a significant time manually editing the person from a specific company/ organization that receives attention to the mail. For example under the company, “The Granite," John is listed as the CEO and Cynthia is listed as secretary. We would like the solicitation mail to go to Cynthia. John would still received all the end of year reports through direct mail.

Is there a process or system that you guys have used to automate such process? Thanks!

Barbara Kunkel · December 2022

@Hannah Lee
For our mailings, for example, acknowledgment letters, we use the Organization Address Tab and select the Contact Type on who receives the letter. For each mailing, you can select all or some contact types.

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Austen Brown · December 2022

@Hannah Lee I recommend utilizing @Barbara Kunkel's method with differentiated contact types in your system. You could have “Primary Contact” for the CEO, but then “Receipt Contact” for the Secretary. By utilizing the contact type field in this way, it will assist with your overall Mail Merge process.

Lauren Henderson · December 2022

@Hannah Lee I definitely agree with @Barbara Kunkel and @Austen Brown. I would add that figuring out what types of contacts you need (while keeping them to a minimum) and having a policy/procedure for how to assign them will help to keep things neat and tidy and minimize future headaches!

Spring Velazquez · December 2022

@Hannah Lee
I've always used a contact type of “Acknowledgement” with business records. I utilize it for all explicit ("please send all correspondence to…") or implicit (no person specified, but collateral includes a name that the letter can be directed to) contacts for the donor. What we don't do is ever send an acknowledgement without a specific person to direct the correspondence to.

Mail Merge Automation

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