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Newsletter, June 2007

By Karen Graham, Client Development Manager

Nonprofit Neighborhood

Click-through Tracking Now Available in PowerMail

We are excited to announce that click-through tracking is now available with thedatabank's e-Marketing Module.

When setting up a hyperlink, a user can simply name that link to set up the tracking.  After sending, view the Results to see the number of recipients who clicked each named link, and drill down to select the list of people.

New HTML Editor Works on Macintosh, Firefox

After an exhaustive search and extensive testing, we've settled on what we feel is the best HTML editor for our clients.  It will go live tomorrow , Friday June 15th.

An HTML editor is a tool that allows you to create HTML code using a "WYSIWYG" - What You See Is What You Get - interface that looks similar to a word processing program.

This new editor replaces the e-WebEdit and KTML editors that were previously used.  Highlights:

• It works on Macintosh!
• It works in Firefox and Mozilla! - as well as many other browsers that were previously not supported.
• The user guide is much more friendly.
• There's nothing to download.
• Links, images and tables are easier to manage.
• Users can choose from a drop-down list of your web forms and drop the link right into the email.  This includes Meetings occurring in the next 90 days (for clients who have the Meetings & Events Module).
• Merge fields, text formating, etc are similar to the old editors.
• Users can still view and edit the raw code if desired.
• Pasting from Microsoft Word is less problematic than in other editors.

New clients

1000 Friends of Maryland - This organization protects Maryland's natural areas and waterways, strengthens neighborhoods, and restores once vibrant cities through education, technical assistance, and advocacy. 1000 Friends of Maryland will be using their new Databank for Fundraising efforts, Advocacy Alerts, eMarketing and for managing their Meetings & Events.

Progressive Democrats of America - PDA seeks to build a Democratic party and government controlled by citizens, not corporate elites -- with policies that serve the broad public interest, not just private interests.  They will use their Databank for grassroots advocacy, communications and fundraising.  Nancy Ging, who will head up the implementation for PDA, described it as a "big leap forward"!

Bob Hill for Congress - Bob Hill, a property tax attorney from Stillwater, Minnesoata, is running for Congress in the 6th Congressional District. He chose our Voter Management Module which is useful for targeting and managing field contacts.  He will also use the Databank for fundraising, volunteer management, and email communications. 

Farewell to Scott

Scott Hagen, also known as Turbo, has interned with us for the past 4 months.  He has accepted a consulting position in the filtration industry.  Scott plans to take a few more classes to finish his computer science degree this summer.  Best wishes!

Congratulations Melissa!

Our Marketing Assistant was married on June 9th and is now off on her honeymoon in New England.  Please note her name change from Melissa Kusmich to Melissa Imboden.

Households with mismatched addresses

Recently we had a question about how to indentify household relationships* where one member's address is different from another member.  This address mismatch could lead to duplicate mailings, since the Householding function, which is used to combine records for a mailing, looks for an exact match on the address.  It will not, for example, consider "500 Main St South" and "500 South Main Street" to be a match.

To identify these situations, follow these steps:

1. Do a Duplicate Check based on address.  This process adds a numerical Dupe Code to each record that is marked as a potential duplicate.

2. Search > Relationships for all records with the relationship type of Household.

3. Search > Personal and remove records with a Dupe Code, that is, records that had matching addresses.  So you are left with household members without matching addresses.

*The ability to establish various types of Relationships is standard with the Databank, and with our Household Power Tool, the Household relationship features are more robust.  Visit our web site for more information on this and other Power Tools.

Fathers & Families named Charity of the Month

Fathers & Families, a national advocacy organization and a client of thedatabank, was named Charity of the Month by Charity.com in June.  Congratulations!


Tip du Jour

Using PowerMail Batches and Click-throughs

With click-through tracking now available in our e-Marketing Module, Databank users can become more sophisticated in evaluating and predicting the results of their email campaigns.  Here are a few examples:

Segmenting Geographically

Example: in an e-newsletter, send each congressional district as its own batch and compare open rates and click-through rates by district.  Similarly, you could split them by state (for a national organization) or zip code (for a local organization). 

The results can help you determine which topics are most popular in each area, so that you can better target your communications and grassroots organizing in the future.

Analyzing Donor Response Rates

Example: in a fundraising message, use previous donors as one batch and prospective donors as another, and track click-throughs to your online donation form.  Or, split it out people who have previously donated online from donors who have never made an online donation. 

The data you glean from this will help you to make more accurate predictions about the response rates to expect from different donor segments, and evaluate the success of your online giving campaign.


Karen's Blog

Multiplying like rabbits

Last night we found a baby bunny, about the size of a fist, hiding under the irises in our back yard.  Then we saw another, and another...a total of six.

Not only were they adorable little critters, but they also gave me the hook for my blog this month.  It's like this: tweaks and enhancements are popping up all over the Databank lately.  Some of them are little, some big; I don't think any of them are cute or furry, but they sure are useful.  For example:

• PowerMail click-through tracking - big!
• A new HTML editor in PowerMail and Action Alerts - also big!
• Ability to cancel a scheduled message - small, but helpful
• Search by dupe code field - ditto

Should I offer the developers a carrot?

Karen

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