If you intend to send a mailing using a mailing house or a printing company outside of your organization, you can create a report in Bloomerang CRM that includes all of the information the mailing house needs. You can also create interactions to keep track of the mailing in Bloomerang CRM.
Create a Report
Your specific needs will vary depending on the information you want to include in your mailing. Follow these steps to create a Constituents report as a starting point:
Click Reports.
Click New Report.
Click Build a Report from Scratch.
Click Constituents.
Filters
At this point, you have created a constituent-based report that includes all of your constituents. Regardless of your intended audience, you can begin by filtering for only those constituents that have a mailing address, those that have opted in to receive mail, and those that are not marked inactive or deceased in Bloomerang CRM.
Click Add filter…
Select the Has Addresses filter.
Click OK.
Click Add filter…
Select the Communications Restrictions filter.
Select Do Not Mail, then click OK.
Click Or…
Select the Status filter.
Select Inactive and Deceased, then click OK.
Now your report contains constituents that have addresses, are willing to receive mail, and are currently active with your organization. You can now apply any other desired filters to the recipients list. For more information about using filters, read Report Basics: Add Filters.
Note: You can change a constituent-based report to a household-based report by clicking Constituent and changing it to Household. This will group constituents into households, if they are in households, and will reduce the number of letters that you need to create. For more information, read Run a Report by Household.
Columns
By default, a constituent-based report contains columns for Primary Street, Primary City, Primary State, and Primary ZIP Code. You may want to include the Envelope Name column as well.
Follow these steps to add a column for Envelope Name, then repeat these steps for any other columns that you want to include:
Click Add Column.
Search for and select Envelope Name.
Click Add 1 Column.
For more information about adding columns to a report, read Report Basics: Add and Edit Columns.
When you are finished adding columns, click Save and Export to Excel to download the report. If you have additional information outside of Bloomerang CRM that you’d like to include, you can add it to the Excel file, but note that you might not be able to import all of this information later in an interaction.
Tip: The Account Number is automatically added for each constituent when you export to Excel. Account numbers will help if you create an interaction import later, since they are the best way to match constituents during an import.
Create Interactions to Track Mailings
Creating a report does not create an interaction on a constituent's timeline. However, it is a good idea to keep track of your mailing activity in Bloomerang CRM using interactions. You can create interactions to track your mailings in several ways:
Add Interactions
If your list of recipients is short enough, you can manually add interactions to each recipient's timeline. For more information about creating interactions, read Interactions.
Import Interactions
If you are mailing the letter to many recipients, it may not be feasible to add an interaction to every recipient's timeline one by one. In this case, consider importing interactions. Use the report that you exported earlier as a starting point for your import file, and make sure that the Account Number is included in the report. If you made any changes to the file outside of Bloomerang CRM, remember that you may or may not be able to import those changes. For more information about importing files, read Set Up Import Files.
Warning: Imports are irreversible. Before you import interactions, consider consulting Bloomerang Support to ensure that your import file is set up correctly.
Create a “Proxy” Letter
Even though you are sending a mailing through a mailing house, you can still create a “proxy” letter in Bloomerang CRM to account for the interaction. To start a new letter, do the following:
Click Communications.
Click Letters, then New.
Choose Constituents.
Describe your letter and click Next.
For more information about creating a letter, read Create a Letter Template.
The content of the proxy letter is not important. However, you need to reference the report that you created for the mailing house, in order to pull the constituents into the letter.
Click Filter.
Click Add filter…
Select the Is in a Constituent Report filter.
Click Select a report.
Select the name of your report.
Click OK
Your letter will now reference the constituents contained in the report that you created for the mailing house. For more help, read Use Filters from Another Report.
Click Save and Preview, then Run. You will not use the letter that you created in Bloomerang CRM, but an interaction will be created for each constituent that receives your mailing.
Note: If you added any additional constituents or columns to the report outside of Bloomerang CRM, those will not be represented in your “proxy” letter.