Target Audience Mailing Lists Procedure

This procedure is used when a user wants to create a mailing list that targets certain subsections of people that are on Shelterbuddy. The link that is used to do this is called Target Audience Mailing Lists and can be found on the Fundraising page, accessible from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

1. On the left-hand side of the screen, in the Menu click on the Fundraising link.  The Fundraising page will display.
2. Click on the Target Audience Mailing Lists link.  This will take you to the Target Audience Report page.
3. From here you have 2 options:
   • New Target Audience Mailing List
   • View and Create new Criteria for Mailing List

New Target Audience Mailing List

This is where you will create the mailing list. Start off by entering a Mailing List Name, Description, and # of intended recipients. Try to follow a general pattern for Mailing Names to avoid confusion – ie. ‘January Imprint 2009’, ‘Tax Appeal 2008’, etc.

If the Mailing List is for a Campaign that has been entered into Shelterbuddy you can select the Campaign from the Link with Campaign drop-down menu. This will ensure that any donations made to this Target Audience Mailing List are associated with the appropriate Campaign.

The next step is to set how you want records to be included in/excluded from the mailing list – if they need to match ALL of the criteria that you enter, or any individual criteria (for example, if you chose a member type of ‘Life’ and donations of between $5 and $10: do you only want Life Members who donated between $5 and $10, or any records that are either Life Members or who have donated between $5 and $10?).

The same logic applies to the ‘Exclude from mailing list’. By default, the ‘OR’ value will be selected for both, and this is generally the value that should be used unless you are creating a very specific mailing list.

Next, you come to the main criteria for the mailing list. The criteria are separated into categories such as ‘Members’, ‘Donors’, ‘Adoptions’, etc. If you do not wish to use a certain category of criteria you can simply leave the fields associated with that category blank.

Selecting criteria from this section are as easy as selecting values from drop-down boxes and date boxes or entering numbers for donation amounts.

Once you have selected the desired criteria from here, you get to the next section: Pre-defined Criteria. This section of the page will list any criteria that have been made from the View and Create new Criteria for Mailing List page. To use these, simply find the desired criteria and select either Include or Exclude from the corresponding drop-down box. You can include/exclude as many pre-defined criteria as you wish.

Once you have finished, click the Save button.

View and Create new criteria for Mailing List

This is where you can create criteria that may be specific to your desired mailing list (for example, all Members of a certain type that are from a specific branch), but can also be re-used in future mailing lists.

To create a new Criteria click the New Criteria link. From this page, you simply name the criteria, provide a description of the criteria (generally who the criteria are aiming to select), and then select a category from the drop-down list.

Different fields will appear depending on what category is selected. You can use as many of these fields as you wish within the category.

Note: the options offered relate to your choice. I.e.: 

• Membership: this will offer you options for Membership Types, Number ranges, and Branches linked to membership.
• Donation: this includes dates between which the target audience have donated previously, postcode/zip code/postal code ranges, previous donation amount ranges, and campaigns to include or exclude.
• Adoption: includes the dates between which the target audience adopted a pet, what type of pet they adopted and postcode/zip code/postal code for where they live
• Major Donor: allows you to select one or more Major Donation Categories to include or exclude
• Bequest: allows you to include elements such as source of contact, status of the bequest, if they are participating in a pet legacy program, dates for contact, values and various other elements.
• Personal Categories allows you to include or exclude specific means of contact, such as adopters, people who have surrendered, or reclaimed, or brought strays in, or volunteered. You can select as many as required here. 
• Mailing Lists: allows you to include or exclude subscribers to different Mailing Lists.
• SM Number range: this allows you to include or exclude a number range for Person ID numbers. 
• Person Acquired from: helps you limit your list to persons acquired from, or excluding persons acquired from the list as selected using the Person Acquired from field on the Person main page. 

When your criteria is finished, click Save. If you made a mistake, you can simply click the Delete link and create the criteria again.

Once a user-created criteria has been used in a Target Audience Mailing List, it cannot be deleted.

4. If you are happy with the criteria that you have selected, click the Run link. IMPORTANT: This report will run differently to most other Shelterbuddy reports, and can take anywhere from 1 minute to 10 minutes to run depending on the criteria and database size. Once you have clicked run, simply leave the Shelterbuddy window as it is until the report has finished running. When it is finished running you will be presented with a ‘Save File’ pop-up window. Save the file to your desired location.
5. The generated file will be a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. To open this, simply open Microsoft Excel and select ‘File’, then ‘Open’. Next select ‘All Files’ as the type to open, and select your mailing list file. From here, simply follow the prompts, making sure that you select ‘delimited’ and tick ‘comma’ as the delimiter.
6. When that has opened, simply save the Target Audience Mailing List as a Spreadsheet.
7. If you wish to make any changes to the Target Audience Mailing List selection criteria after viewing the results, simply click on the ‘Edit’ link next to the appropriate mailing list, make the desired changes and click ‘Save’, then click ‘Run’ again.
8. If you are happy with the mailing lists results, click the ‘Flag Selected People’ link to ensure that a record is kept of who was selected by the mailing list. This allows you to go in to a person record in Shelterbuddy and click the ‘Target Audience Mailing Lists’ link in the ‘Person Menu’ at the top of a person record and view a list of the Target Audience Mailing Lists that they have received, as well as any donations that they have made to that mailing list. 

Be aware that once you have clicked the ‘Flag Selected People’ link, the Target Audience Mailing List will no longer be editable.

9. If you wish to delete a Target Audience Mailing list, simply click the ‘Delete’ link. Mailing Lists cannot be deleted once they have had the corresponding ‘Flag Selected People’ link clicked.