Why Didn’t John Donor get my Email?

Why Didn’t John Donor get my Email?

Meet John Donor.

It happens all the time. You create a beautiful email in BEE, set up your marketing effort or event invitation, and hover over the mouse for a few seconds before pressing that daunting “Start” button to send your email. A few days later, you notice one of your most important constituents, let’s call him John Donor, didn’t get pulled into the list.

First let us take this opportunity to remind you to always review your mail or email spreadsheet before sending your communication. If you’ve reviewed and noticed a few important recipients aren’t included, put on your sleuthing cap and read through these common scenarios of why constituents are excluded from GAIL communications. 

1. They don’t meet the selection criteria.

It might seem like common sense, but sometimes John Donor will be excluded because he doesn’t meet the criteria you asked for your selection to be based on. 

For example, your selection includes all FY19 donors but John hasn’t made a gift yet this fiscal year, so there’s no way for him to be pulled into the selection. When this occurs, you should review your spreadsheet for other key constituents who may be missing and possibly reevaluate your audience.

2. They opted out. 

Maybe John Donor received a few too many emails from UGA this week, or he’s trying to go green and minimize the number of things he gets in the mail so he updated his communication preferences. You can check to see if a constituent has previously opted out of communications by clicking on the Communications tab then the Preferences sub-tab on their record. 

Note: communication preferences may not be end-dated without the explicit consent of the constituent. 

3. Their contact information is invalid (or not in GAIL). 

Looks like John Donor recently changed companies, so the email address we have on file no longer exists and the last email we sent him caused a hard bounce. A hard bounce signals to the Records team that the email address is invalid and should no longer be used. 

If you happen to know John’s new email address, there’s a very simple way to have him included in your communication: add the new contact information to his record then recalculate your communication and his new information will be included in the output.