Guidelines For List Requests By MSU Staff
General Purpose:
Communication list requests are made via the "List Request - Email and printed Mail Communication Request" web-site, at the following url: https://www.montana.edu/cpa/apps/listrequest/admin/
Most Electronic communications are sent out via the Foundation's iModules application. This requires that html code be provided to our Communication Team. University Communications Marketing and Creative Services (Julie Kipfer, Director) can build this html coding.
Mailed communications are usually sent via the University Mail Services office, or other approved third party mail houses.
Donor Lists, ie. a list of donors to your department or college used in a publication and not in a direct email or mail address, are not direct communication lists, so use the "Other" in the Request Use portion of the web-form.
Submitting the request-form triggers emails to the Data/Information Services team as well as the Alumni Engagement, Development, Annual Fund teams within the Alumni Foundation. This is to ensure that our teams are aware of communications to our constituents, especially regarding events planned by your office. On occasion, you may be contacted by members of our team for possible collaboration or clarification.
General Process:
- Submittal of request via the web-form.
- Assignment of MSUAF DIS team member (internal).
- Possible clarifications between DIS and requester.
- Review list sent to requestor.
- Changes to list (if any) or approval for the DIS team to send the list to the Communications Team.
- Finalize and send to appropriate Communications channel.
Include in the Request
- What you need / want, i.e. don't limit your request to what you think we can do. We will "push back" if the data to fulfill the request is not available.
- The purpose of the list (Request Description). There may be additional selection criteria or columns needed depending on the purpose of the list.
About Requests
- Please separate requests with different due dates, even if similar
- No need to separate requests (email and mail) if the due date is the same, although use the Additional Details field on the last screen to explain any differences.
- Requests due on a holiday or weekend will be considered due after the holiday or weekend.
- We can do last-minute list requests, but we generally like to have a week to fulfill the request and do a quality assurance check. This due date is indicated in the Review list preferred deadline field.
The Submission Form Segments
- Requestor Information: Your contact info.
- Request Information: General purpose of the request.
- If the communication is in regard to an Event, additional information is required.
- Request Use: Email, Mail or Other (Donor list, Count of Department Alumni, etc.)
- Request Uses: Different per type of use (email, mail, other). The type of salutation (casual, formal, etc.), if any, is important here, especially if the communication is "personalized."
- Request Details: Similar to previous requests and when. (Allows us to replicate.)
- Request Timelines & Delivery Details: Especially Review List preferred deadline.
- College-Unit Details and Criteria: For specifying particular Alumni criteria.
- Individual Recipient Details & Criteria.
- Donors: Additional details can be specified in the Donation / Giving History section.
- Alumni: Additional details can be specified in the College-Unit Details section
- Members (of): particular groups i.e. student athletes, band members, scholarship recipient, etc.
- Event Attendees: This data is only available if an attendee list has been sent to MSUAF in advance.
- Include Organizations: Usually in regard to donors.
- Additional Details: for miscellaneous details
- Donation / Giving History Details & Criteria: specific College, Dept., Project, donation levels or date range.
- Place any notes tin the Additional Donor Details field.
- Review List Details: Other details.
Frequently Used Criteria:
- By Area: radius (around a zip), chapter, county or state
- By Category: Alumni, Non-Degree, Student, Friend, or organizations
- By Degree: college, department, major, or degree type (BS, MA, etc.)
- While living is the default, indicate if deceased are to be included.
- Solicitation or not (which has impact on DROP codes). Please specify on all requests. A solicitation has an extra step to be reviewed by Dawn Silva of our Annual Fund team.
- By Member (of) or group: AA members, donors, former student athletes, event attendee, state legislators,
- MSU Advisory Board members, honors, awards, scholarship recipients, athletic hall of famers, past fraternity / sorority members, etc.
- Age range (Constituents without birthdates have estimated ages based on first degree date.)
- DONOR Particulars:
- Hard Credit (Outright gifts, Deferred Pmts or Pledge Pmts) and/or Recognition (Matching, Deferred Pledge, Spousal Giving, Company Giving, etc.)
- To a specific fund, College/Unit, Department, endowment / scholarship, etc.
- Date range
Standard Checks We Do
- Mail-able: valid address, and no "DROP" codes, ie the constituent has decided not to receive communications from MSU or the Foundation.
- Canadian addresses are usually "mailable" and are considered a part of our "home country."
- Foreign addresses are excluded.
- Email-able: valid email address, no DRDRP DROP Code, no Do-Not-Email DROP Codes
- Phone-able: valid phone number, no DRDRP DROP Code, no Do-Not-Phone DROP Codes
De-Duping
Usually de-duping for production lists based on the type of communication. If the list is for postal mailings, the de-duping is based on the Household ID, i.e. spouses/couples. If someone else is staying at the same address, like a child or sibling, they will not be de-duped (since the HID is not a duplicate), so they will receive the mailing. We can provide de-duping based on the house hold address upon request or standing protocol (such as for Mountains and Minds or the Collegian).
If the communication is via email, the de-dupe is only by the email address, since a household couple may have separate email addresses or may share the same email address.
FYI - Most communication review lists have three to six columns on the end. These columns are used in the deduping process, specifically the "Email" and "House" columns. Anything above a one (1) is a duplicate.
Other Notes:
- Some inclusions or exclusions may be unfulfillable due to data limitations.
- The constituent ID is the only data requirement for iModule e-mailing , but it does requires a full ID # with leading zeros. We may or may not send review lists with full IDs, but we restore full IDs when sending to the Communication Team for iModule loads.
- There is a difference between Friend and Donor. A Friend is anyone brought to our attention (spouses being the biggest percentage) and have a Category of FR, but may or may not have donated.
- If you include the phrase "Alumni, Friends, Donors," that is generally excepted to be everyone and every organization in our database, unless additional "filters" are applied.
- Alumni generally means anyone with an AL or ND (Non-degree alumni or attended but did not graduate) Category code. If you want only graduates, or certain degree types, please specify.
- A significant delay between the review list and the production (or final) list may cause issues, i.e. a constituent might fall off or meet the selection criteria if there is a significant delay.
- Some requesters have explicit list of people to include or exclude in a list. An example of an inclusion would be send a newsletter to the President and Deans, who normally would not meet the criteria for the rest of the list. Many times these exclusion / inclusion lists carry-over from the previous year's list. The DIS team will ask you to review and reapprove these exclusion / inclusion lists
Contact MSUAF:
Comm & Info Request Admin