How to Mail to Organization Contacts
1. Track your Organization Contacts
First, make sure the person who should be receiving the mailing is marked as a contact of the Organization. That contact should have a specific Contact Type assigned. This type designates when the individual should receive mail. It could be something like “Primary” & “Secondary” or “Grants” & “Events.”
2. In the Output of the RE Export Used for the Mailing, go to Address>Address Processing>Contact
Selecting the address fields from the Address Processing option is imperative. This determines if Organizations or Contacts should be mailed to. Include any desired fields in addition to the address information, such as Position and Organization Name.
3. Include the Addressee/Salutation for Both the Constituent and the Contact
If you are using the Primary Salutation to address the recipient of your mail, you will want to include the Constituent Addressee/Salutation fields, as well as the contact Addressee/Salutation fields. This is because the Contact Add/Sal will only be populated if there is a contact. Therefore, you will need a separate field for the Individual Addressee/Salutation.
If you want to avoid having two fields used for Addressee/Salutations, create a duplicate export used only for Organization records. In the Organization export, only include the Contact Addressee/Salutation and in the Individual export, only include the Constituent Addressee/Salutation.
4. Which Address to Use?
Right click on “Address Processing,” select Criteria, and click on the Org Address tab. In “Step 1,” you can determine if the address for each contact should be the organization’s address or the contact’s address.
5. Mail to all Contacts or Just Contacts with a Specific Contact Type
In the same screen in “Step 2”, consider filtering the Contact Types to include specific Types, such as only Primary Contact by selecting the “Include Selected Contact Types Only” checkbox. Address processing will default to include just the first contact found. If you want to mail to all contacts associated with the Organization or multiple contacts with the same type, make sure to select the “Export one record for each contact found” checkbox.
6. What Happens if No Contact is Found?
If the organization record doesn’t have any contacts, you can choose to mail to a specific Organization address or export the record with no address. If you would like to remove organizations that don’t have a valid address, select the “Remove Record” checkbox.
7. Export Your Mailing!
By accurately tracking your Organization Contacts and selecting the appropriate export settings, you can successfully reach your Organizational Constituents and mail to the desired contact. What are you waiting for? Clean up your Organization Contacts and ensure your next appeal mailing doesn’t end up in the trash!
