Each Suppression, Defined
Here is what those all-caps terms mean:
BASE
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title | IMPORTANT: ONE MUST NEVER COMBINE THE BASE SUPPRESSION WITH SENDING TO ALL SUBSCRIBERS. |
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Use BASE only if you're sending to a relatively small and specific audience, such as attendees of an event, people who have taken a specific action (like an advocacy form), or people affiliated with a particular Audubon program, like Climate Watch.
In other words, use this in situations where you otherwise don't want to suppress anyone. It's is a safety precaution against bots and malicious actors, and is meticulously maintained by the digital platforms team.
If you are confident in the reality of each member of your audience, and this suppression removes someone, then probably you haven't properly flagged your people in the database. If this is the case, please don't avoid using the suppression; instead, contact everyaction@audubon.org and someone will take a look at your audience and let you know where you might be going astray.
ENGAGEMENT
Newsletters, event invites, and general announcements all are what we'll call "engagement" emails. This suppression is the BASE plus some folks from a few groups:
- People who have requested to receive ONLY emails about community science
- People who have requested to receive ONLY updates about chapter leadership
- People who have requested to receive ONLY emails about working lands programs
- People who have requested to not be emailed by Audubon about just whatever
- People you or your colleagues have flagged to not receive general emails for whatever reason
As you can imagine, there won't be many of these people.
In addition to these categories, this suppression will remove anyone who's already gotten an email today, just in case.
FUNDRAISING
This is of course asking people to give money for your programs. This also applies to gift adoption stuff, for those of you who do that. Many people in our database have requested we not ask them for money. It's important that we respect that.
In addition to everything mentioned in the ENGAGEMENT suppression above, this suppression also includes:
- Anyone who has already made an online contribution in the last 30 days (modified to 8 days during year-end fundraising)
- Anyone marked "DO NOT SOLICIT"
- Anyone with a "Relationship Manager" — this is a proxy for board members and major donors, normally people who are removed from general base fundraising emails because they demand special handling and cultivation.
ADVOCACY
Action alerts, council meeting invites, legislative stuff. Since excessively government-y stuff can turn many people off, our wonkiest legislative communications should be restricted to just the people who have already expressed an interest in such things.
FUNDRAISE INCL. MAJ. DONORS
This is just like FUNDRAISING, except it explicitly does NOT remove major donors, board members, and your VIP people. If you've been using the standard suppressions for a while, and you start using this, expect an angry note or two from a disgruntled board member. Use at your own risk.