How do you query on e-mail history for marketing emails sent from RE NXT?

Nora Tobin
Nora Tobin
Seventh Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

We switched from OLX to using RE NXT to send emails. On an individual's record, you can see their email history (what was sent, whether they opened it, etc). Is the data listed in the Email History tile searchable? I can't figure out a way to set up a query to pull the information. We used to keep our email list clean by periodically reviewing who hadn't opened emails in a while and removing them. Is that still a best practice? Any advice on how to proceed?

Comments

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Facilitator 3 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge

    @Nora Tobin
    there's no way to pull the information you want in bulk for now.

    when you say “remove” do you mean you want to remove record that they recevied your email (but did not open?) I don't think it is a good practice to remove that history.

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Nora Tobin - Alex is right, this is view only information. If you want to put in the extra work to maintain this review you can review the bounce lists from Email Marketing. You can then work your way through the resulting constituent list by manually reviewing each listed record to see if the email response was soft or hard bounce (on the Email History tile). I used to do this after every email sent, but the time and effort spent didn't justify the result.

    I recommend you vote for this idea in the RE NXT Idea Bank:


  • Nora Tobin
    Nora Tobin
    Seventh Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Alex Wong Thanks for the reply! I was referring to removing the constituent from our email list for the enewletter, not removing the data.

  • Nora Tobin
    Nora Tobin
    Seventh Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown I've been doing the same review and it's so onerous. Thanks for the recommendation on voting for the idea - I've done so and will share it with others. Many thanks!

  • Kevyn Barnes
    Kevyn Barnes
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Nora Tobin Luckily our lists are pretty streamlined now so I create constituent lists from the Communications/email marketing bounced lists either weekly or every other week to remove hard bounces associated with recent emails, as well as soft bounces if it occurs regularly. After I did the initial sweep a few years ago, it is now usually just a handful every week and usually business or school email addresses unless there has been a major change with a mail service. (During the initial sweep of bounced email, I sadly discovered a lot were deceased constituents when comparing with returned mail so usually check for an obituary if it is a personal email.) Last year, I worked through a long process of exporting dozens of “Opened” lists from email marketing history and then doing an XLOOKUP with our main email list to get an idea of who had not engaged with email at all and if it was worth it to analyze that regularly. It was an arduous analysis task and I abandoned it as an idea pretty quickly because there were too many other variables that seemed to suggest engagement even if the email didn't log as “opened.” For instance, I realized that one donor who mails checks pretty regularly, usually with a print-out of one of our recent emails, shows no engagement in his email history. In that case I can even tell from his printout that his email doesn't automatically download images, explaining why they don't log as “open.” I can also tell from other regular donors that the only engagement that shows up on their email tile are for the emails that they actually clicked a link but I'm pretty sure they are engaging with many if not all of the others.

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