Participant Communications Best Practices

This article contains best practices for Participant Communications and includes the following sections:

• Example Participant Communications, Categories, and Related Recipient Groups
• How to Add/Opt-In Individuals Who Don't Fit the Target Group Criteria
• Managing Participant Communications Preferences

Example Participant Communications and Categories Organization

To best manage participant communications and preferences, it is recommended manage Communications Categories organized similarly to the examples shown below.

Communication Category Name	Comms Item Type(s)/Name(s)	Related Recipient Group(s)
Weekly or Monthly Newsletter	Weekly or Monthly Newsletter (email)	Active Participants with an email address
Program Calendar Mailing	Program Calendar Mailing (Mail File General for bulk mailing list)	Active Participant Households with an address
Participant Communications	General program announcements/notes	Active Participants with an email address
	Special workshop/lecture promotions to target Participant	Active Participants with an email address by specified criteria (cancer type, age, Participant Type, etc.)
	Participant surveys	Active Participants with an email address

An organization of categories and items similar to this will allow individuals to opt-out of individual program items, like the Weekly Newsletter or Calendar Mailing, instead of all participant commnications. See Creating New Communications Categories for guidance, if necessary.

Event Registration and Attendance Categories should already exist in your system and should house all registration and attendance related communications items, but not including text messages.

How to Add/Opt-In Individuals Who Don't Fit the Target Group Criteria

If you wish to include individual people other than Active Participants in regular communications (like items 1 and above), follow these steps.

1. A Gnosis Admin User must create a new attribute section under the General Attributes tab.
   • The new attribute(s) could be individual checkbox(es) per Communications Item or a multi-select list (as shown below).
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2. Update the recipient group being used for the necessary Communications Item(s) to include a subgroup section to add your new attributes to the existing criteria.
   • 
   • The recipient group above is now directed to All Active Participants with email as well as All Active records with email and the Weekly Newsletter attribute selected.
   • This subgroup setup also allows you to add other Role attributes more easily, like Board Members, PAC, etc.

Managing Record Communications Preferences

Below are some general best practices and resources offering guidance in this area.

1. Managing Communication Preferences - A training video overview of managing communication preferences.
2. Updating Deceased Person Records
3. If asking on an intake form if a Participant would like to receive donor/fundraising communications, you must set them as Opted-Out to the Donor Communications category on their Opt-In/Out Settings tab.