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Newsletter, December 2007

By Karen Graham, Client Development Manager

Nonprofit Neighborhood

Email contact preferences

Since thedatabank's bulk email system can, in most cases, detect whether an email recipient is able to accept HTML or text-formated messages, the contact preference indicating HTML or Text is not obsolete.  Members formerly marked as preferring HTML or Text have been changed to OK.  Here's a quick explanation of what the Email Contact Preferences mean:

• OK - Email address is okay; this is the default choice.
• Always OK - Instructs the automated bounce handling to ignore bounces and keep attempting to deliver to this email address.
• Unsubscribed - The member has requested to be removed from the email list.  This is set automatically by thedatabank, when a member clicks an "unsubscribe" link.
• Bad Email - This is usually set automatically by thedatabank, when the email address has either one hard bounce (e.g. no such email address), or three consecutive soft bounces (e.g. mailbox full).

Advocacy messages moved to new server

On December 2, thedatabank began delivering Action Alert emails through a special email server which improves our ability to deliver and track the messages.  Users of our Advocacy Module may notice the following changes:

• Clicking on an Issue now takes you to a preview, which is consistent with the way PowerMail works.
• Action Alerts (specifically the Activist Message email) can now be scheduled in advance to send at a certain time.
• Other links, in addition to the Act Now link, can be named and click-throughs tracked.

Distinguishing PowerMail and Action Alerts

The change mentioned in the preceding article blurs the line somewhat between thedatabank's eMarketing and Advocacy Modules, since both send bulk email messages, with similar delivery and tracking features.

PowerMail is part of our eMarketing Module and is used to send e-newsletters, invitations, news releases, and so forth.  It allows the user to create multiple templates for different purposes. 

The Advocacy Module is used to send calls to action and generate messages from activists to targeted decision makers.  Along with the "Activist Message" email, Issues created in the Advocacy Module also include an "Action Page" on the web, Targets (e.g. legislators or corporate policy makers), and a Target Message that is suggested to activists.

New Clients

Education Voters Institute - EVI builds public support and voter demand for education policies that promote universal access to high quality education. They will use their Databank to manage a variety of contacts and online interactions.

Sequoia - Sequoia Inc. is a premier service provider for children and adults with developmental disabilities in four Texas counties. Sequoia provides case management, skills training, respite care, and specialized therapies.  According to Development Director Luann Golden, "After months of evaluating different donor software packages, we were so glad to discover the products of thedatabank. But most of all....it was the personal touch from thedatabank staff that made the difference!"

Tip du Jour

Keeping your Databank safer through password security

Last month, a hacker breached Convio (a competing software company), and may have succeeded in taking email addresses and passwords from members of organizations using that software. To their credit, we feel Convio responded well, but unfortunately the damage was already done.

This attack on another company has raised some questions from our clients. Is thedatabank safe from a similar attack? Senior Software Engineer Sean Gardner has spent most of the past four months implementing security changes in thedatabank's software applications.  According to Sean, "The Internet is a much less friendly place than it was 10 years ago when thedatabank first began serving clients, and we've improved system security over that time as hacking techniques have become more sophisticated."

Long before the Convio incident, thedatabank began an intensive security review and upgrade program to 'reduce our attack surface area.' That's security jargon for making it more difficult for unauthorized persons to access the system.

Of course, the most secure system is one that's not accessible by anyone, but that extreme case is also the least useful. On balance, our clients themselves can address the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities by keeping their passwords secure. That means:

• Deleting all unused accounts.
• Changing passwords on all user accounts frequently, say, every 90 days or less.
• Changing the password immediately (or deleting the account) when someone leaves your organization. If the person who left had administrative access to the system, ALL user passwords should be changed immediately.
• Not re-using previous passwords.
• Using passwords that cannot be guessed: Make passwords long (8+ characters). Embed punctuation and numbers. Mix upper and lower case characters. Avoid using real words.

Also, no user account should be given higher permission levels than needed to do the job. thedatabank's flexible permission system makes it easy to tailor access for each user's needs.

We have plans for additional security enhancements and tools we can offer to clients to help manage passwords and user accounts. Some of these enhancements you'll be hearing about, while some that are more technical will be quietly implemented behind the scenes. We continually strive to provide our customers with the most secure and the most useful system possible.

Karen's Blog

Forget letters to Santa, I'm writing a letter to the editor

I have a confession.  I never actually believed in Santa Claus.  We celebrated Christmas, but my parents just never pretended that Santa was more than a character in a story.  So, I never wrote any letters to him.

I have, however, written to the editor of my local paper.  They quoted an elected official, without any critique of what he said, which was misleading at best.  I gave them a couple facts along with a personal story of why I cared about the issue, and although they didn't publish my brief email, I did get a personal response from the editor encouraging me to write a longer letter that they could publish.

I've seen some interest from nonprofits in getting their members to write letters to the editor.  Our Advocacy Module can make it easier; here's how it works.  You set up the editors as Targets for an action alert.  Either send a separate alert to each newspaper's geographic area, or try our beta tool which lets the activist select from a list of newspapers.

A word of caution, however...editors do not appreciate getting multiple copies of an identical message, which is clearly generated by a sponsoring organization.  If they are going to publish something, it needs to be original.  This article by Scott Gillespie , the opinion editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, underlines that point.

So, if you're doing an LTE campaign, urge your members to write their own letters.  In the "suggested message" you can provide an outline and some facts they can use.  Here's an example:

Click to write a letter to the editor of thedatabank's enews

I'll look forward to getting your personalized messages.  Just don't send your Christmas list, wise guy!

Karen

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