Additional 499 Tips

Setting up a 499 bulk mailing in Fireside is a breeze. All you need is an audience larger than 499 people (but not too big!) and an approved form letter. Then, you're ready to start your bulk mailing!

Creating audiences in Fireside is easy with our audience builder, allowing you to target specific groups of people based on many different fields. For instance, you could opt to send a 499 to people in a certain zip code or city, or you could choose to send a 499 to people who are interested in a particular issue or have a certain affiliation code. You can also mix and match fields to meet your needs (ex: people from a certain zip code who are also interested in a particular issue). Here are some examples of audiences that can be built in Fireside. 

Once your audience has been built you just need an approved form letter, and then you're all ready to create your 499 bulk mailing. 

When sending out 499s, the bulk mailing tool is superior to the newsletter function because it allows you to create an audience larger than 499 and then simply limit the mailing to 499 people from the audience (whereas the newsletter function sends the mailing to the entire audience with no limit available). In cases where you're using a much larger audience than 499, we recommend the use of issue codes to help ensure you only contact a person once during a series of multiple 499s.

Affiliations and Imports

Use this if you have a spreadsheet of people you need to import and then target for a mailer.

1. Have an Account Owner create an affiliation code in Fireside under System Settings > Affiliations that's specific to your bulk mailing (ex: "499 - Oct 2020 - Pro Immigration Reform").

2. After ensuring that your spreadsheet is suitable for import, navigate to Imports from the "+" icon, and start a new import. Make sure that the affiliation code you just created is added during Step 1 of the import process. Complete the import process to its conclusion.

3. While you wait for the import to finish, navigate to Outreach > Audiences, and create an audience for the affiliation code.

4. If both your audience and approved form letter are ready, navigate to Outreach > Bulk Mailings and start a new bulk mailing! Make sure to set the limit to 499 if your audience is larger that 499 people.

5. After your bulk mailing finishes processing, you can begin sending out your mail.

Form Letters

With regard to form letters, it is our recommendation that the letter you are using for the 499 be 100% approved and require no further edits when you go to create your bulk mailing. This includes printing a test to ensure that it prints all on one page and has the spacing you prefer. Of course, last-minute edits do occur and can be made, if necessary, but try to avoid this whenever possible!

Final Note: If ever you need to redo the bulk mailing for any reason, please make sure that you first go into the bulk mailing and click "Delete Assigned Letters." This will delete all of the letters that were assigned during the first attempt and allow those constituents to be included in the second attempt to create the bulk mailing. If you do not delete the assigned letters, the people to whom those letters were assigned will be excluded from your second attempt to create the bulk.

Click here to read how issue tags can help improve your bulk mailing program!