Recommended Process for Mailings

This section describes a best practice process for creating and managing a mailing. The benefits of using InterAction and following this process to manage marketing lists include the following:

• Marketing lists in InterAction can track who added each contact into the folder (sponsors).

  This simplifies the task of identifying who needs to take additional actions, like signing holiday cards.

• Using InterAction to manage the process can improve the image of the organization because contacts do not receive multiple mailings from the organization.
• Activities that are logged regarding people who received mailings build valuable historical information and Relationship Intelligence that the professionals can leverage.
• Professionals are notified in the Web Client and InterAction for Microsoft® Outlook® alert list when and to whom mailings are sent.
• Following these procedures saves time for both the department preparing the mailings and the individuals determining who will receive mailings.
• InterAction provides a streamlined submission process for professionals using a link to the marketing list in the Web Client sent via an email message.

The following are the high-level steps in managing a mailing:

Mailing Process Steps

1. Create and Configure the List
2. Populate the Marketing List
3. Validate the Contacts
4. Execute the Mailing
5. Perform Post-Mailing Tasks

Create and Configure the List

Create a folder as a Marketing List with or without sponsorship. If this is an annual mailing, you can perform this step early in the year so new clients and other appropriate contacts may be added over the course of the year.

If you will be creating several similar marketing lists, you may want to set up a folder template.

Inform users that the marketing list has been created and how it should be used. Let them know that appropriate contacts may now be added to the lists. If this is a one-time mailing list, a deadline should be given for when all contacts must be added.

You may want to “push” the marketing list to the appropriate users’ frequently used lists. In general, you should only push a marketing list out to users’ frequently used lists when creating a new list. If a user has removed a folder from his or her list, it may be annoying if a removed folder returns to the list.

For further information on creating marketing lists, see Creating and Editing Marketing Lists.

To help enforce rules for which contacts should be included on a mailing list, you may want to use Folder Dependency Analyzer. This tool uses a set of folder dependency rules to automatically move contacts in and out of folders based on business rules you define. See Using Folder Dependency Analyzer for Mailings.

Populate the Marketing List

The Marketing department, professionals and their assistants, or both can populate the marketing list.

Marketing typically uses the Windows Client to populate marketing lists. There are several ways to add a contact to a folder using the InterAction Windows Client. For example, the Marketing department may develop criteria for who should be included on a marketing list, such as contacts from health care companies in the Chicago area. Based on this criteria, Marketing performs dynamic queries or searches in InterAction and populates the list with contacts who meet the criteria. For details on how to use the Windows Client to populate a marketing list, see Using Marketing Lists in the Windows Client.

Professionals and their assistants within the organization use the Web Client to add contacts to the mailing list. Only firm contacts may be added to this list. To let professionals and their proxies easily access the mailing list, you can navigate to the mailing list in the Web Client, copy the URL to that page, and send it as a link in an email message to these professionals. For additional information regarding how professionals can add contacts to a mailing list, please refer to the Web Client help topics on Marketing Lists.

Business Development Information Folder

Contacts included in marketing lists should also be linked into the Business Development Information folder so you can leverage information contained in its Additional Fields, such as the 1st Line Social Invitation and Preferred Method of Communication when running Automated Export. See Tracking Business Development Interest.

Validate the Contacts

Prior to executing the mailing, run the following searches to ensure only valid contacts and data are contained in the marketing list folder.

Contact validation should be performed prior to each mailing, even if you are using an existing marketing list.

• Run a search that looks for contacts without a mailing address.

  If any contacts are found, notify the sponsor(s), if available, that the contact cannot receive a mailing unless the sponsor provides a valid mailing address. Delete the contact from the marketing list if no address is available. Alternatively, if you will use automated export to execute the mailing, you can configure an If/Then/Else export extension to delete records from the mailing that do not have a mailing address. See If/Then/Else Extension section of Supplied Export Extensions for details.

• Run a search that looks for deceased contacts.

  Delete any contacts found in the marketing list folder. Note, you could configure Folder Dependency Analyzer to automate this. See Using Folder Dependency Analyzer for Mailings.

• Run a search that looks for contacts included in the * Send No Marketing Communications list.

  If any contacts are found, notify the sponsor(s) that the recipient has requested that they not receive mailings from the organization. The policy on marketing mailings varies from organization to organization, however, and your mailing may not be considered “marketing mail.” If policy dictates that this mail is included in this category, delete the contact from the marketing list. Note, you could configure Folder Dependency Analyzer to automate this or to make sure removed contacts are not added back to the list. See Using Folder Dependency Analyzer for Mailings.

• Run any additional searches that look for contacts who do not want to receive that particular mailing.

  For example, if you have a Do Not Send This Mailing additional field set up for the marketing list, search for contacts in that folder that have this field set to Yes. For more information, see Excluding Contacts from a Specific Mailing.

An average of 30% of data becomes invalid per year. Your organization should proactively attempt to manage contact changes by performing a bulk data cleansing process.

If you are managing a mailing for a marketing list with sponsorship, you may want to periodically have your users validate that they still want the contacts they are sponsoring to remain on the list. You can print and distribute the out-of-the-box Contact List by Sponsor report to facilitate each user reviewing the list of contacts he or she is sponsoring.

For an additional level of validation, you can “scrub” the list of contacts by exporting the contacts list to a CSV file and manually examining the list to ensure no data, for example, the country, is missing. If necessary data is missing, notify the contact’s sponsor, if available, to gather the missing data.

 If you are managing an International mailing, you may also want to validate the Gender and Preferred Language fields, as well as language-specific contact name information. See Validate Contacts.

Using Folder Dependency Analyzer for Mailings

To help enforce rules for which contacts should be included on a mailing list, you may want to use Folder Dependency Analyzer. This tool uses a set of folder dependency rules to automatically move contacts in and out of folders based on business rules you define.

Folder Dependency Analyzer can add and remove contacts from marketing lists based on certain criteria. For example, you can create a search that finds clients designated as tax clients, then automatically link these clients to a “Tax Alert” marketing list.

You need administrator access to configure folder dependency rules. If you do not have administrator access, you need to contact an Administrator user to create or edit any applicable folder dependency rules.

You can choose to use a folder type as the target for a folder dependency rule. In this case, contacts will be added or removed for all folders assigned that type. This is basically a shortcut for removing contacts from multiple folders at once. Instead of specifying a separate rule for each individual folder, you can create a “blanket” rule for all folders within a folder type.

This capability is especially important with marketing lists, where you may have many lists. It would be unwieldy to configure folder dependency rules for every marketing list. For example, you could create a rule like the following:

Contacts that are both ‘Deceased’ contact type and in the Marketing List (with sponsorship) type folders are removed from the Marketing List (with sponsorship) folders.

In the above example, you would need to configure one more rule to account for all marketing lists since InterAction includes two marketing list folder types out of the box:

• Marketing List (with sponsorship)
• Marketing List (no sponsorship)

You could set up similar rules to remove contacts that are included in the * Send No Marketing Communications marketing list from all marketing lists (with sponsorship) and all marketing lists (no sponsorship).

You should be cognizant of the data collection privacy laws that exist for your country or the countries where you will be sending marketing mailings. After familiarizing yourself with these laws and regulations, your organization can determine the appropriate processes and procedures for your use of InterAction in order to be fully compliant with these acts and laws.

Managing Contacts Sponsored by Users Who Have Left Your Organization

When an employee leaves your organization, search all mailing list folders where the former employee is the primary sponsor. For all contacts returned in the search results, determine if each contact should be:

• Removed from the mailing list
• Assigned a different sponsor
• Left on the mailing list without any sponsor

While this search can be done using the Windows Client's Search capability, you can also use Data Minder's Offboarding process to assess the profile of an employee.

If you do not deal with sponsored contacts proactively when an employee leaves your organization, you may want to print the out-of-the-box Contact List by Sponsor report prior to executing a mailing to review contacts on the mailing that are sponsored by former employees.

Execute the Mailing

For physical mailings, print the labels, assemble, and send the physical mail pieces. Create address labels for mailings by either using automated export to perform a mail merge or by sending the data to external processing facilities.

When appropriate, be sure to leverage the 1st Line Social Invitation field from the Business Development Information folder.

For electronic mailings, send out broadcast email messages. If you are not concerned about revealing recipients of the mailing to each other or including all recipients in the Bcc: field, you can use either of the following methods:

• InterAction Broadcast Email is a service that makes it easy to address an email message using one or more email addresses stored in InterAction.
• The Send Email action is available to end-users in the InterAction Web Client. 

Through InterAction Broadcast Email and the Send Email action, you can select to send your message to the current contact, a set of marked contacts, or all contacts in a folder (or search results) and select whether the recipients should be placed in the To: or Bcc: field of the message. Although you can protect the recipients’ identities and contact information by placing addresses in the Bcc: field, this method may seem impersonal and runs the risk of being filtered out by spam blocking tools. You can also specify other options, such as the email address type to use (Business, Home, etc.) through InterAction Broadcast Email.

To preserve the anonymity of the email message recipients, the mail merge capabilities of Microsoft Word, using InterAction as the data source, can send personalized broadcast email messages to one or more email addresses. For further information, refer to Creating Merge Documents.

Perform Post-Mailing Tasks

Once the mailing is executed, perform the following tasks:

• Reconfigure Data Change Management
• Record Activities for the Mailing
• Process Returned Mail or Bounced Email Messages
• Remove Contacts Who Request to Be Taken off ALL Mailings

Reconfigure Data Change Management

After printing labels or routing slips for the mailing for contacts currently linked into the marketing list, reconfigure Data Change Management for the marketing list folder to review any new contacts added to the marketing list:

1. Set the Add Request Action to Review.

   If any users add new contacts to the list, a Data Change Management ticket is submitted to the data steward responsible for the mailing.

2. The responsible data steward must routinely check the Data Change Management Inbox for contacts added to the list.
3. Print labels for contacts added to the list. Route as appropriate.
4. Approve tickets after labels are printed.

Record Activities for the Mailing

For all contacts to whom you have sent the mailing, add an activity regarding the mailing list of type Marketing Mailing with a description of the mailing in the activity Summary. Set who can see this activity to Everyone.

Process Returned Mail or Bounced Email Messages

The following are some recommended tasks for handling returned postal mail:

• Search for the person and company contact of the returned mail piece.
• Call the person or company to verify that the contact information has changed and to determine for whom the information has changed.
• Correct the erroneous address and any other incorrect data and save the changes.
• Set up two additional fields to store the last verified date of the address and who verified the information. This information will be useful to data administrators later.
• If you do not have a centralized data administrator, notify any departments that maintain contact lists or databases outside of InterAction regarding the updates.

The following are some recommended tasks for handling bounced email messages:

• Copy the entire incorrect email address from the bounced email message and paste the email address in a search as the search value to find the appropriate contact.
• Call the person or company contact to verify that the contact information has changed and to determine if the information has changed for just this contact, some, or all company contacts.
• Correct the erroneous email address and any other incorrect data and save the changes.
• Set up two additional fields to store the last verified date of the address and who verified the information. This information will be useful to data administrators later.
• If you do not have a centralized data administrator, notify any departments that maintain contact lists or databases outside of InterAction of the updates.

Remove Contacts Who Request to be Taken Off All Mailings

Only follow this procedure if the contact wants to be removed from ALL mailings. If the contact only wants to be removed from a particular mailing, see Excluding Contacts from a Specific Mailing.

At times, contacts may ask to be removed from all mailings. When this occurs, perform the following steps.

1. Delete the link to the contact from the marketing list.
2. Link the contact into the * Send No Marketing Communications folder.
3. Notify any sponsors that the recipient has requested that they not receive mailings from your organization.

See Identifying People Who Do Not Want Marketing Communications and Using Folder Dependency Analyzer for Mailings for more information.