Good morning,

When I was creating a mass email in the Communications section for our organization's main fundraising event, I sent a test email to myself before sending the mass email. 

I used a "merge tag" in the email to auto fill donors' first names. So the message read "Dear (first name)". I sent the test email to myself and it read "Dear Hope,". Hope is my first name. So it worked! I made sure all of the donors' account settings had a "first name" filled in so there wouldn't be any blank first names. Then I sent the mass email to hundreds of donors.

Some of the donors replied and said their emails said "Dear  ". It was blank. I asked Blackbaud and they said even though I manually typed in all the first names into their account settings, I had to use the Conversion tool to split, export and import all the donors' names before it would auto fill properly.

I would like to suggest that the test email show exactly what the mass email will show. If the merge tag wasn't going to work for my mass email, the test email should have been blank too so I would have known before sending it to hundreds of donors. It looks unprofessional and embarrassing. This could have been avoided if the test email was the same as the real email.

Also, when I was making the mass email, there were no notes stating that it wouldn't work without using the conversion tool first so I manually typed in their first names which is what the merge tag pulls from. I would like to suggest a note pop up when there is a specific way something like this needs to be done.

Thank you for your time and consideration.