"New merge fields for personalized email greetings"

Jonathan Angell · February 19

"Hooray", I thought. The reality is a big disappointment. In Online Express, we could define which addressee/salutation to use for primary, secondary and tertiary add/sals - which allowed us to set one up for Constituent ID (which we want to mail out to graudates on occasion as a reminder of their official ID number, so they can fill in surveys etc and be matched easily etc).

Sadly, this is not an option in this latest release, that I can see at least.

I mean, who uses "Addressee" in an email? It's meant for the front of an envelope.

Does anyone have a workaround for getting Constituent ID into an RE NXT email, short of redefining everyone's primary Addressee to be their Constituent ID?

Jonathan Angell · February 19

I've added an idea for this to the Ideas bank, since all the similar ideas have been marked as "shipped" (though in reality most ideas have not been implemented in full). The idea name is:

Allow more than one Addressee/Salutation in RE NXT emails, and allow us to define each

Elizabeth Johnson · February 19

Thanks for adding this @Jonathan Angell Here is the link for anyone that wants to vote.

Elizabeth Johnson · February 19

Perhaps Primary Salutation wasn't showing up yesterday. I didn't peek until today and I can see it now. While I want conditional options for Addr/Sal - gettting to use primary salutation is a huge improvement over preferred name.

Carlene Johnson · February 19

I wonder what happens when one selects Primary Addressee or Primary Salutation but the message is being sent to an Org record?

Does it just default to the Org Name or is it blank?

Jonathan Angell · February 19

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/311012#Comment_311012

yes, I agree it is an improvement - though sadly it doesn't answer many of the ideas which are now marked as "shipped". It often feels like the Developers produce a half-answer, and it can be quite frustrating when (seemingly) the full answer wouldn't be any more work for them.

Jonathan Angell · February 19

Great question! It would probably need a function similar to letters in database view, where we can specify how to deal with organisations e.g. by specifying the contacts to mail

Elizabeth Johnson · February 19

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/311016#Comment_311016

I just tested this and here are two screenshots - one for my record and the other for The Putney School (spoiler - just org name) - I have a conditional return in my Addressee - so nice to see it does show up with a Character return:

I also tried out the Formatted Address as I had not noticed that before (no need) and it may be formatted but some spacing between lines would be helpful.

Karen Diener · February 19

I'm not surprised by the way this treats Organization records. Blackbaud has always been clear that emails go to constituents. So if you want to specifically email the contact person at an organization, and they are a non-constituent relationship, you cannot send them email.

Another enhancement I would love is conditional logic. So you merge preferred name but use first name if there is no preferred name on the record. There is an idea for this that needs some love:

https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-4117

Carlene Johnson · February 19

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/311035#Comment_311035

I'm glad to know it prints the Org Name. I was afraid it might leave a blank I didn't want to get something like "Dear , " as the salutation. Thanks @Elizabeth Johnson for testing! And @Karen Diener thanks for the idea bank link!

"New merge fields for personalized email greetings"

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Allow more than one Addressee/Salutation in RE NXT emails, and allow us to define each

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