Sending out physical letters and newsletters can be a fantastic way to boost engagement with your supporters.
This article will walk you through how to export your supporters from Beacon and prepare their data for Microsoft Word's address label feature.
Step 1: Exporting names and addresses from Beacon
The first step from getting your supporters from Beacon record to address label is to export them from Beacon. The best way to do this is creating a custom export template.
Note: You can learn more about standardising your exports with export templates here or see some helpful exporting examples here.
Step-by-step
To begin, navigate to Export data > Manage templates > Create template
As you're exporting data about people, you'll want to select the People record type:
In this export template, you'll want to select the data you want to appear on your address labels. We'll go with the person's full name and details about their address. Select these fields as columns on your export template:
You can leave this export template set to Dynamic so you export directly from your People record type. Hit Save to save the template.
Now head over to your People record and filter for the people you want to create address labels for. Once you've found them, select them all and select Export.
Note: To learn more about useful filtering examples click here
Step 2: Prep your .csv file to be used in Microsoft label merge
Great - you've got your lovely clean export file out of Beacon!
The next step will be to convert it to a file format Microsoft likes (namely .xlsx). Beacon generally exports in .csv format but it couldn't be easier to convert this to an .xslx
Simply open your csv file in Microsoft Excel > Save and it will do all of the converting for you 😉
Step 3: Use Microsoft Word's label making feature to generate your postage labels
Your file is now ready to merge!
The next part will be done in Microsoft Word. You can find the next steps here