"Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

[aprescott]

Hello,
I represent a small nonprofit that uses Alpha Five v12 to manage our donor database. We track all donations in the database, and at the end of the month, use Alpha to send a thank-you letter to all who gave within the past month. Further, we are able to customize the letter to modify the wording slightly based on whether the donor gave that month or if they are a monthly giver that has not given yet that month.

We are looking at the prospect of reducing cost by "going paperless" for at least a portion of our donor list (based on the demographics of our donors, not all would connect with e-mail correspondence). Because everything regarding our donors is already stored in Alpha, is there some way to e-mail this donor letter using Alpha? Each letter would have to be unique (to include the donor's last gift amount).

We're talking about 1000 e-mails at most.

Any ideas?

[DaveM]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

Use a template
and yes you can do that. You can have all the little changes you need done to happen with filters, xbasic and so on.

Once it is completely set up, it can also be automated on some sort of "trigger" you devise or press a button to send all at once or in intervals.

[Steve Workings]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

This has been raised before, but worth mentioning again: If your computer pumps out 1,000 emails in a very short period of time, your local ISP's computers may decide that you're a spammer and lock your account for 24 hours (happened to me 1 day before my festival, on my farm, that I was promoting and there was no fix to be had). So, know your ISP's rules and/or do it in smaller more dispersed chunks.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

Steve is right. Your ISP will shut you down in a heartbeat if they think you are sending spam. You could check with them and let them know what you are intending to do and see if they can stop the block.

We were doing customized reports. We ran the reports in batch to unique pdf files, then using the e-mail addresses stored in the table, sent them. We did some monkeying around with "sleep" commands to "pause" the mailing process for a minute or so after 30 letters, then start it again where we left off.

This method worked pretty well for us.

Tom

[DaveM]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

You might try an email service like this one for mass emails. There are several out there.
https://www.sendinblue.com/pricing/
300 a day limit and 9000 a month limit for free.

sending from my own computer with alpha, I did the template against the mailing list and sent x number, stopped and sent the next x number. It was several years ago, but a nice lady at brighthouse told me what the break limit was and I set up for 5 less per the allowed send.
It took a while for the app to send 25000, but it got there.

Using a service, you can use their templates, export your mailer list(s) and import into their service and done. Usually csv, but some may vary.

Also non-profits may get a better break.

[DaveM]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

I personally do it all on the web now. I have excellent hosting for that, they allow up to 100 per hour and I use a mailer app just for that from joomla that I also just happen to have running. The joomla plug in is call acymailing(not free).

I have also used phpmailer that is stand alone(free).

Both have facility for multiple lists and csv import ability for those lists. Send one email to one list and set timer to send a different email to another list and on and on.

The one for joomla can use other tools like mandrill to do the sending.

[martinwcole]

Re: "Going Paperless" - A way to use Alpha to e-mail donor thank you letters?

We use Mandrill, 1st 12,000 free per month, no daily limits - Alpha has builtin tools for same.