We considered both the types and means of contact when setting up our contact exclusions. Types are
General (newsletters and other information),
Solicitations, and
Invitations. Means of contact are
Mail,
Phone,
Email, and
SMS. If we're asked to not contact a person we mark them "Do Not Contact" but if they unsubscribe from a particular type and means we only remove them from that one. This gives us the ability to respect the request of a person who wants news by email but nothing else, but isn't so granular that constituents have to opt out of every single message we send out.
Shortly after we came up with this system we did a project where we contacted people who had opted out of communications because there had been a history of opting people out of ALL communication when they asked not to be solicited or not to be mailed to. That was a one-off, though.
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Lianna Bodzin
Assistant Director of Advancement Services
Colorado School of Mines
lbodzin@mines.edu------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 08-12-2022 03:43 PM
From: Colleen Deal
Subject: Contact Exclusion Codes
We are evaluating our email, mail, and phone exclusion code policy, and trying to figure out the best way to manage this in which we respect the constituent's wishes about contact, while not overdoing it and leaving them out of all communications. Would anyone be willing to share their policies on exclusions codes – any information you would be willing to share is great, but a couple of questions we do have are:
- Do you let your exclusion codes expire? Meaning, do you remove them after a certain amount of time (5 years, 10 years, etc)?
- How specific do your exclusion codes get in terms of different types of emails, mailings, etc.? Are they a blanket No Email, No Mail, No Phone, or are the specific to different types of emails, mailings, and phone calls?
Thank you!
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Colleen Deal
Executive Director of Advancement Services
Appalachian State University
dealcf@appstate.edu
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