Renewals Generation Screen
When the Renewal Generation option is
selected, the following screen appears:
This is command central for producing
your paid renewals efforts, whether by printing out your
renewal forms for mailing or sending the renewals across
the Internet via e-mail broadcast. Flexibility is the
primary focus of the MA Circulation Managers renewal
system. It is based on creating custom renewal series, on
for each category of renewal type you might wish to have,
be it foreign, domestic or other types of renewals. From
this screen you select the type of report to run from the
Options list. The available options are:
- Generate regular renewals
- Generate donor renewals
- Reprint regular renewals
- Reprint donor renewals
- Projected revenue report
You have different sortation options, including
Zip/Postal Code, NDG, company and ID. These sortations
are not applicable to the Projected Revenue Report. Also
note that the NDG sortation only applies to Canadian
addresses, although it can be used for all addresses for
sorting by zip code. If you pick Projected Revenue
Report, you must enter three rate codes at the bottom of
the screen to represent typical renewal rates for
projection purposes.
The Generate Regular Renewals option prints renewal
forms based on the parameters you’ve established for
renewal. All individual subscribers with pending renewals
are generated. If you have subscribers who are donors
(someone who pays for another subscription -- IsDonor is
set to “Yes”) or have been marked for gift
subscriptions (someone who is paid for by another
subscription -- ID does not equal the DonorID at the time
an order is entered), the you must run Generate Donor
Renewals option to print these renewals out. The format
for Regular Renewal and Donor Renewals is different, as
the Donor is dealing with multiple addresses -- the donor
and the gift subscriber. There is also a
“Reprint” option for both to reprint out
existing renewals, which ignores the data between
renewals condition associated with the individual renewal
series, and you must specify the start and end of the
ID’s for renewal to print. This is primarily used
when the renewals jam in the printer and you need to
start over from a given point. The “Update Renewal
Attempt” check box must be check in order to have
the renewals correctly updated.
The Project Revenue Report allows you to print a
report to estimate the revenue potential from the current
renewal effort. The system provides you with the ability
to use up to three different renewal rates to apply to
the projected renewal numbers. The project renewal amount
is then printed for each of the three rates at ten per
cent increments. By using this report, and tracking
against actual renewals, you will become better at
estimating the renewal rates. If actual renewals deviate
from estimated, you will be able to uncover problems to
avoid, or successes to duplicate.
The conditions portion of the screen allows you to set
specific criteria for the selection of which renewals to
run. All mean all renewal that are qualified to run.
Being qualified to run means that a subscription means
the conditions set out in the Renewals Series assigned to
the individual subscriber. These conditions, which
include the number of issues remaining, the time between
renewal attempts and the maximum attempts per series, are
set in the Renewals Series setup screen (see page 1-15
for more details). The other conditions available all
have as their base the conditions set out in the Renewal
Series definition screen, which means that if you have a
maximum renewal attempt level set to 3, and attempts hits
that level, a renewals stop for those subscribers.
You can alternately run renewal based on the remaining
issues by selecting the “Remaining issues
from:” option and specifying the start and end of
the range. The same can be done based on “Renewal
attempt range:” base on a renewal attempt range that
you enter. If you wish to use the expiration data
instead, you can do so by selecting “Expiration data
from:” and filling in a start and end for the range.
Note that all calculations on expiration data actually
use the start and end issue number stored in the
subscriptions data base (SUBS2), but use the issues date
data base to translate that into approximate issue
numbers. Due to this translation, it is recommended that
you use the remaining issues option above instead of
expiration range.
You can further build a condition but specifying the
exact Renewal Series to run by pressing the <Select
Renewal Series> button. This button will popup the
list of Renewal Services that you’ve defined.
Highlight the Renewal Series desired and press the
[Enter] key to select it. Once you’ve selected all
Series desired, press the [Control] and [End] keys
together to save the selection. The codes selected will
appear under the <Select Renewal Series> button
once you return to the Renewal Generation screen.
You might wish to condition the output of renewals if
there are special forms that you use for different
renewal attempt levels. Another reason to run a condition
on renewals would be if there special inserts to be sent
for for specific Renewal Series. If there is no specific
reason to segment the printing of renewals, then the
conditions need never be used.
Once you’ve selected your condition, you should
also give thought as to the output format. There are five
format to select:
- Report
- Labels
- File
- Net Mailer
- Upload Sorted File
The Report option prints the renewal
report, whether for Regular or Donor Renewals, to your
selected printer. Note that you can modify these reports
and create a custom one per publication by change the
report name to include the publication code as the first
four letters.
If the Labels option is selected, the
you can print labels instead, and pick from the list of
label formats provided. Picking the Custom label format
allows you to specify a custom label layout that
you’ve created or had made for you.
The File option will output the data
to an ASCII delimited file. The name for the file will be
prompted by the system and must be filled in by you. You
can use File option for unloading data for postal
sortation, or use in a mail merge word processing
application.
Selecting Net Mailer will output the
data in to a DBase compatible file format which can be
used by Alpha Software Net Mailer package for e-mail
broadcasting purposes. Note that Net Mailer must be
purchased separately from the MA Circulation Manager, and
is the sold by Alpha Software
(http://www.aphasoftware.com). The data base created is
directly compatible with Net Mailer version 1.0, and can
be attached to an mail merge template you create for
e-mail broadcast purposes. The file name is filled in by
you, and the file create can be attached directly to a
Net Mailer e-mail letter without the need to use the
import feature. All your efforts and other parameters are
updated, and can be use in customizing your renewal
e-mail in Net Mailer.
If the Upload Sorted File option is
selected, none of the other features of the screen are
available as it is assumed that you are going to upload
and print a file which has been download by the File
option above for postal walk sortation purposes. When
this option is selected, it runs the a special renewal
form which adds the necessary postal information to the
label portion of the renewal form and does not update
attempts, as that is done at the file creation stage.
Renewals are effortless with the MA Circulation
System, and this screen does all the work.
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