If you’re an Opportunities Interface user you can use the Bcc Emails to Activities functionality to create new Activities based on emails you send in your usual mail client. When you send an email from your own email account and Bcc a specifically-created Spektrix Bcc email address, the system will create a new Activity (including the body of the email) and, if possible, attach it to the customer record in Spektrix of each of the people you’ve emailed.
This allows fundraisers (or anyone in your organisation) that have email communication with donors to quickly and easily input that valuable information into Spektrix, and helps you keep a record of all your fundraising work in one place.
What are the benefits?
You might use emails to discuss all manner of subjects with donors, from conversations about gift asks to personal information that would be valuable for donor bios, and it’s useful for you or your team to have all of this information in one accessible place when talking to them in future. By using the Bcc Email functionality to automatically add this information into your Spektrix system as Activities, you can then reference it in future and report on it using the Donor Profile Report.
The idea is to allow you and your team to get information out of your heads and inboxes and into a place where it’s reportable and easy to access for your whole team; this way, everyone can use it, and it’s not dependent on a single person always being available.
It’s also a way to save time for anyone who wants to store and act upon information but doesn’t have time to record it manually every time. Using this functionality, everyone - from Development Director to Development Assistant - can contribute to the organisation’s pool of knowledge about donors, regardless of how often they use Spektrix or how busy they are.
What do I need to do?
First, you’ll need to generate yourself a Spektrix Bcc email address. Users need to have either Opportunities User or Opportunities Administrator access to the system in order to do this.
You can generate your Bcc address in one of two ways:
In the Settings Interface
If you have Settings Administrator access then you can go to Settings > Users and select the User Accounts option:
Click on the name of the user who you want to generate a Bcc email address for (this could be your own user account or that of another user), then select the Bcc Email Address tab on the left-hand side and click on the Generate button:
You’ll see the newly-generated Bcc email address in the text field, and can then copy and paste that into your address book.
In the Control Panel
Alternatively, you can open the Control Panel (in the bottom-left corner of the screen) from any interface (except Settings, where you can use the above method instead) and select Change User Settings from the options:
From here, scroll to the bottom of the User Settings popup where you’ll see a section called Generate Spektrix email address to BCC in fundraising emails:
Click the Generate button to generate a Bcc email address for your own personal account:
As before, you’ll see the newly-generated Bcc email address which you can then copy and paste into your address book.
What does it look like?
Whichever method you use to generate your Bcc address, you’ll see that it appears in the following format, depending on which territory you are in:
- UK/IE and Canada: bccspektrix-<clientname>-<unique random key>@eu.spektrix.mail
- US: bccspektrix-<clientname>-<unique random key>@us.
spektrix.mail
Make sure that you add this into your address book in your email client, so you won’t have to remember the whole address each time you want to use it.
Who needs a Bcc email address?
Each member of your organisation who wants to use this functionality should generate and use their own Bcc email address, so that the correct assignee can be marked on each newly-created Activity.
How do I use my Bcc Address?
Once you’ve generated and saved your Bcc email address, you can use it to create Activities in the Opportunities Interface any time you’re emailing your donors from your own email client. You can send as many Bcc emails as you need, and each one will be logged as a new Activity.
NOTE: if your email communication is likely to go on for a while, we recommend you only put in the Bcc email address when you’re nearing the end of the chain. If you have it in from the beginning, you’ll end up with new Activities for each step of the conversation, which will quickly build up into an unnecessarily large number of Activities, making it harder to find the most useful information.
Any time you want to create a new Activity in Spektrix from an email you’re about to send, just add your Bcc address into the Bcc field of your email client before you click send:
NOTE: you must have an address in the To field in order to send an email.
For security purposes, if your Bcc email is ever 'exposed' (e.g. accidentally put in as a Cc address or in the To field instead), Spektrix will automatically deactivate it and send you an email to tell you to make a new one.
Assuming you’re sending from an email address which is attached to a user in Spektrix with either Opportunities User or Opportunities Administrator access, three things should happen once you send that email:
- The email will be sent to the recipient(s) as normal
- You will receive an email confirming that a new Activity has been created
- A new Activity will be created in Spektrix
If one or more of the recipients of the email are already customers in Spektrix, the newly-created Activity will be linked to their customer record; the email you receive will include confirmation of their name(s) and customer ID(s). If they’re not already customers, the Activity will still be created but won’t be linked to a customer (it won’t create a new customer record).
NOTE: if the email address you’re sending from isn’t attached to a user with either Opportunities User or Opportunities Administrator access, then adding a Bcc email address won’t stop the email from sending but will generate an automated email letting you know that an Activity hasn’t been created:
Any newly-created Activity will include the email address used, the subject of the email you sent and the time you sent it, along with the body of the email as a note. It will also be created with the Activity Type of Email, and your user account as the Assignee. Here’s an example:
Each new Activity created in this way will automatically be marked as Completed, to reflect the fact that the email conversation has already happened. You can, however, edit an Activity if you need to, including adding the amount of time spent and attaching any required documents as attachments.
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Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team if you’ve got questions about using the Bcc email address functionality, or would like to discuss anything in more detail.