Excel Sheet After Excel Sheet

This week, I continued with my contact list process.  Let me explain, in detail, the following step, after inputing the lists into the PatronMail system.  PatronMail exported a list of “bad emails” and “opted outs.” I then focused on continuing to search out and delete those emails.  To say this process is tedious to the point of going a bit insane, as I scanned roughly twenty excel sheets, for these obnoxious emails, is not a dramatization.  I spent all of Tuesday, June 12^th, and half of Wednesday, June 13^th, trying to wrap this up.  But what I was not aware of, was that this project would be endless.

            As I went through the lists, finding these emails, I track my progress in a clear way.  As I erased the bad email, I kept the other info from the contact and marked the email column with “Bad Email from PatronMail List 6/12.”  This way, I could evaluate how old some of the lists were, based on how many of the contacts had this bold, underlined, red label. 

            While my boss also enjoyed seeing how I had tracked the bad emails, through the excel lists, she advised me on how to proceed.  She told me to print the lists out, so we could have them on record.  Then she advised me to go ahead and delete the entire contact that had a bad email.  Her reason was intelligent, saying that if the email was bad, then there is a fair chance the contact does not exist anymore.  And this summarizes my eighth week on the job.     

Hiccup

This week, my internship had a hiccup.  I can into work on Tuesday, June 19^th, with the beginnings of a head cold.  The museum had the opening of a brand new exhibit, Faberge: Imperial Jeweler to the Tsars, coming within days.  With that, my boss was not reluctant at all to tell me to go home.  I’m sure she wanted me to rest and get better, but she was more threatened by the potential contagion of her entire staff, which could not happen at that critical moment, when every second counts. 

            So I gladly retired for the day, went home and rested.  But the next Monday, I woke up feeling worse.  I emailed my boss to let her know my condition, and she response was very humorous.  I knew she would have no intention of wanting to see me until I was one hundred and fifty percent better, which she communicated saying “for my sanity, please remain in your bubble.  My bubble is too fragile right now.”  So I did not make it back to work until the following Tuesday, June 26^th, when I was in perfect condition.  Luckily, I will work over 150 hours at the Bowers Museum this summer, which is twice what the History 398 asks for, so this hiccup will not affect that factor.

Flashback

My internship for week 6, June 12^th and 13^th, was occupied with the same extensive, tedious, administrative project I have been handed of locating, editing, and updating all the contact lists of the entire Bowers database.  Unfortunately, I am not sure what to discuss this week, with already having explained the entire process of how I go about this project, step by step.  So instead, this week I would like to describe the environment I work in, contrasted to my environment last summer.

            I sit in the Communications and Branding department, which is different, was last summer, when I interned at the museum. Last summer, my desk was in the Marketing department, which is a descent size room, holding four cubicles and a five-person conference table.   The two other interns for the marketing department in the 2011 summer session were hired on about two weeks after myself.  The three of us (Megan, Gentry, and myself) had an exciting summer, full of loud laughs.  Our boss, Nancy Johnson, would have to come around the corner at least once a day to hush our laughs.  But even though we were a bit hyper for a museum, the three of us had a great, creative mix flowing.  We wrote multiple press releases that stunned our boss. 

The desk I occupy this summer is about ten feet from my boss, Nancy Johnson, but not within eyesight.  She repeatedly forgets I am even there and finds it stunning how quiet and attentive I am this summer.  It is a much quieter room, with the walls stacked with binders, each one containing all the information to catalogue every exhibit the museum has opened.  This of course serves a pertinent purpose.  If, for some tragic reason, the museums’ hard drives get destroyed, than at least there is a hard copy.  That way, if the museum gets an exhibit to return, we do not have to start from scratch in composing a successful exhibit.  We have the entire life of the exhibit already catalogue for reference.  Very smart, in my opinion, but then again, I naturally organize everything.  

Needles in the Haystacks

            Week 5, Tuesday June 5th and Wednesday June 6th, I continued working on the contact lists project in the database.  With the work I had completed the week before, all the contact lists had been gathered, formatted, and the duplicate lists had been deleted.  From this point, I uploaded these updated lists into the Patron Mail System.  This system is where all of the museums’, hopefully, up to date contacts are contained.  This system makes it easy and efficient for the museum to send out email blasts of coming exhibits, events, speakers, workshops, etc. 

            So what I did, to make the “updating” stage of the now organized contact lists easier, was to input the lists into the Patron Mail System.  Then I sent out a mock “e-blast,” to see which emails bounced back as “bad emails” or contacts who “opted out.”  The list I got back from Patron Mail was exhausting looking!  Out of roughly fourteen hundred emails, I got seven hundred and eighty two that bounced back on me.

            Next stage of the tedious process, I began the search for the needle in the haystack.  The list purely contained the bad emails.  There was no indication of which list the email was from, or the name of the person whom the contact belonged to.  So I basically had to go on a crazy hunt, through roughly twenty-five lists, each with hundreds of name, organizations, phone numbers, addresses, and emails, to find the bad emails and delete them. 

            Inputting the lists into Patron Mail took all of a half an hour.  It was the mad search for each needle in the valley of haystacks that consumed the rest of my week.     And the process would continue into my 6^th week on the job, but more on that when it comes.  This entire project is exhausting and obnoxious, to say the least, but in the long run, is type of work is what is key to making a non-profit not only thrive, but purely live.  

The Daily Grind

This week, when I got into the office around 9:30am, Tuesday May 29^th, my boss had an overwhelming look of excitement.  Unfortunately, she knows me all too well, and what I am proficient at, which is not necessarily what I always enjoy doing. 

I am a person who finds contentment in organizing just about anything and everything.  So when Nancy announced my next project, she knew I would be happy to take on the hours and weeks of tedious work that would be demanded.  As I mentioned earlier with the radio stations’ contact lists, the museum, throughout its entire database, has roughly eight contact lists.  Some short, some long, some with different contact information for the same correspondent at a particular station, some with information that had not been edited since 2005.  This all just for the radio station category.  As many marketing departments in arguably all organizations or firms, our category of contact lists are numbers, from different cultures, to religions, to airline magazines and online at forums, to yacht clubs and the Red Hatters. 

So what my boss was so eager about, she wanted me to swipe the entire database for all of the contact lists, compile, edit, and update.  I began the project with first locating all the lists, in their various locations, most of which were in some very obscure places that made no logical sense.  I brought the total of ninety-eight lists into one folder.  I next formatted them into the same font, size, color-coding, and spacing.  This makes it easier on the eyes and less straining to have to de-code.  Not having to scour lists to find out what is necessary, expedites the process.  Then I collected every list of a related category, for example airline in-flight magazines, and put them into one excel sheet with the different tabs.  I did this for every different category, which was taxing for sure, but in the long run, make the system run much more smooth.  This is what constituted my activities for Week 4 on the job.  A tedious task, but a great experience of what the daily grind looks like to oil the system that Bowers operates on.

 

Seeing Results

This week began with me, on Tuesday May 22^nd, revising my email blast to the radio stations, then sending it out.  A had a nice response from Radio Disney.  They communicated how they had partnered with the Bowers Museum in the past, and enjoyed the experience, agreeing with myself on the mutually beneficial, intrinsic relationship between the two party’s.  We communicated through email, back and forth, brainstorming ways to promote one another this upcoming summer.   Naturally, promoting Bowers Kidseum on Radio Disney’s website event calendar was an immediate avenue.  Bowers Kidseum is our friendly museum fitted to the enjoyment of adolescents.  We have yet to set-up a “shout-out” deal.

Getting a “shout-out” on air is not a simple phone call.  Most stations’ sell “shout-out’s,” which I addressed in the initial email to the stations’, given the museum is a non-profit organization serving to educate and entertain our community, the museum’s marketing budget is very small.  So landing a “shout-out” is tricky to say the least.  Then there is a script that has to be drawn up, for what will be read off on air.  And there are time constraints to how long the “shout-out” will be, so appropriately fitting a script into that time is another concern.  This whole “shout-out” business is a work in progress, as evidently clear, but I am very optimistic of the outcome.    

I got responses from other stations, but I noted my experience with Radio Disney, because it was a positive step in my non-academically trained marketing interests.  I really enjoy marketing, especially when it goes smoothly, but I am sure I am in for some bumps in the road.  

The Art of the Job

Week two on the job,  I began working on re-establishing the Bowers relationship with radio station’s whose audiences are compatible with the museums.  My boss was very enthused to have me taken on this project.  I was confident this would be easy for me, given I made a lot of these relationship pretty solid last summer.  These relationships could be very strategic to accessing the museums community via a different path; through the radio.  Marketing successfully with a radio station to bring in new or returning audiences to the museum, requires a clever and creative way of approaching the stations’ audiences. 

            The first step in this project is to find what pre-existing excel contact lists we have of radio station.  It is important to find out what information we already have, what information we need, and what information is out of date.  Also, how have we reached out to the radio stations in the past?  Have we emailed or made a personal call?  How have they responded and what work have we done with them?  All this information can be accessed through the “notes” tab on every excel sheet.  The museum takes precaution in noting its history, so that new employee understand the situation they are walking into. 

When looking through “the pool,” which is the hard drive database on the computers that contains everything that deals with public relations, there are multiple excel sheets and word documents, which need editing, revising, and examination.  The contact lists were scattered and a giant mess, to say the least.  I comprised every excel sheet into one master document, then went through and deleted the duplicates, creating a clean, concise, and efficient contact list.

            After understanding the situation the museum had and hopefully currently has with the radio stations, then it was time to gather the information that we want to promote.  Being concise and clear is important.  People do not have the time or interest to spend reading a lengthy email, so communicating concisely makes both party’s happy.  This is what I worked on this week: finding, updating, and formatting the pre-existing list, then composing an email blast.