Add a communication letter

1. Access the record or process page of the communication.

2. Under Letters, select Add.

3. In the box on the left, select the letter at the bottom of the list.

4. Select whether to use a new or existing letter with the mailing.

• To create a new letter, enter a unique name to help identify the letter.

• To use an existing letter, select Use previous letter. The search screen appears for you can search for and select the letter to use.

• To create a new letter entirely, select Add another letter under Letters in this mailing.

5. Under Letter recipients, select the recipients to receive the mailing. For a new letter, select Add and select its recipients. To adjust the recipients for an existing letter, select Edit. For information about how to select recipients for a letter, see Select Recipients for a Communication.

6. The program automatically excludes deceased constituents from the mailing. Select whether to include inactive constituents, such as to engage with lapsed donors.

7. For an appeal mailing, under Exclude constituents based on the following, the default communication exclusions for your organization appear. Edit the exclusion criteria for the letter as necessary.

Note: When you edit the exclusion criteria, you edit the exclusions for the appeal mailing letter only. For information about how to edit the communication exclusions for your organization, see Default Communication Exclusions.

• To edit the criteria of the recipients excluded based on communication and revenue activity, select Edit for Recent activity. For information about how to edit exclusions based on recent activity, see Edit Recent Activity Exclusions.

• To edit the criteria of the recipients excluded based on solicit codes or constituent selection, select Edit for Solicit codes and selections. For information about how to edit exclusions based on solicit codes or selections, see Edit Solicit Code and Selection Exclusions.

8. Scroll down to view the Letter content options.

9. Select whether to merge the mailing's recipient information with a letter or export the recipient information as a comma-separated values (*.CSV) file.

• If you print your letters in-house, select Merge recipient information with a letter. When you select this option, Altru merges the recipients you selected for the letter with the letter content you create in the HTML Content Editor, such as to fill the merge fields used in the letter with information about each constituent. After you run the mailing, a Microsoft Word document is created that contains the letter content for each recipient that you can then print and send through mail. If your mailing contains multiple letters, a .ZIP file is created that contains a Microsoft Word document for each letter.

When you select this option, Altru also generates a (*.CSV) file of recipient information along with your merged content.

• If you use a mail house for the mailing, or want to write your letters with another program such as Microsoft Word, select Export a .CSV file of the recipient information. When you select this option, Altru generates a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file of your recipient information and merge fields that you can then send to a mail house to create the mailing, or manually export to Microsoft Word to create the mailing yourself.

10. If you select Merge recipient information with a letter, select whether to send the letter through the mail, email, or both.

If you select Mail and Email, recipients receive the letter through a channel based on their communication preferences. Select the channel to use for constituents with no selected communication preference.

11. Under Select recipient information to use to personalize your letter, select the merge fields to use with the letter.

Note: By default, the mailing uses merge fields commonly used for appeal mailings. To view a list of the merge fields included in the export definition, select Preview. To edit the merge fields included in the export definition, select Edit. When you edit merge fields, you cannot remove a merge field from the export definition that is being used in another letter. To remove the merge field, you must first remove it from the letter in which it is used.

12. For an appeal mailing, select the ask ladder to use to determine the ask amount to include in a recipient's letter based on giving history. For information about ask ladders, see Ask Ladders.

13. If you select Merge recipient information with a letter, select Add under Write your letter’s content.The Add content screen appears so you can define the letter content to use for the selected channels. For information about how to define letter content, see Letter Content.

Tip: To view how content appears as mail output, select Preview to download a sample of the content as a Microsoft Office open XML document (*.docx) file. With this file, you can preview the content in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You cannot save changes made to the preview. To edit the content, select Edit on the Add communication letter screen. To remove the content entirely, such as to re-write it, select Remove.

14. To create another letter to use with the communication, such as to target different recipients with specific content, select Add another letter and repeat the process.

Tip: The letters included in a mailing appear on the left side of the Create your letters tab. When you include multiple letters, arrange them in the order in which to generate them for the mailing. To remove a letter from the mailing, select its red X.

15. After you add all letters to use with the communication, select Next. The Finish up options appear.

16. Under Letters, the letters included in the communication appear. If you include multiple letters, arrange them in the order in which to generate them for the communication. For example, arrange the letters so the process generates letters for board members and major givers before it generates the default letter used for all constituents.

17. Select Finish and close.