The short answer: as far as we know, Altru doesn’t include a built-in, live connection to Constant Contact. Before you plan around that, confirm it with Blackbaud support for your own instance, since connectors and partner options change. Either way, organizations that pair the two usually land in one of three places: a manual export and import, a scheduled sync run by a third-party tool, or a hybrid of both. Which one fits depends less on the software and more on how often your lists change and who owns unsubscribes.
Start with the question that decides everything: where do opt-outs live?
Moving contacts from Altru into Constant Contact is the easy direction. The hard part is the return trip. When someone unsubscribes in Constant Contact, Altru doesn’t find out unless you tell it. If your next export pushes that person back into a list, you’ve re-added someone who asked to be removed. That’s a deliverability problem and a trust problem, and it’s the most common way these setups go wrong.
Pick one rule before you build anything:
- Constant Contact is the authority on email consent. Altru exports can add or update contacts, but Constant Contact’s own unsubscribe status always wins. This is the simplest rule to live with, because Constant Contact generally won’t email a contact who has unsubscribed there, even if you import them again. Test that behavior with a dummy address before relying on it.
- Altru is the authority on email consent. Then someone has to bring unsubscribes back into Altru regularly, by exporting them from Constant Contact and updating the solicit codes or email preferences on the matching constituent records. Doable, but it only works if it’s on someone’s calendar.
Option 1: A repeatable manual export
For organizations sending a monthly newsletter and a handful of event announcements, a disciplined manual process is often enough.
- Build a saved query in Altru for each audience you mail: current members, lapsed members, donors, recent visitors, educators. Include the constituent ID, first and last name, primary email, and any fields you want to use for personalization or segmentation, such as membership level or expiration date.
- Exclude people who shouldn’t be emailed directly in the query: no email address, deceased, and whatever solicit codes or communication preferences your organization uses for “do not email.”
- Export to CSV and import into Constant Contact, mapping the Altru constituent ID to a custom field. That ID is what lets you match records later, because email addresses change and households share them.
- Import into a list named for the query and date, or overwrite a standing list, so you always know which pull a list came from.
The weakness is drift. A member who renewed yesterday is still tagged “lapsed” in Constant Contact until the next export. If you send renewal reminders, that lag matters more than it does for a newsletter.
Option 2: A scheduled sync
Once you’re exporting more than a few lists a month, or sending anything time-sensitive, a scheduled sync starts paying for itself. It works like the manual process, with the export and import handled on a schedule: an Altru query runs, the results land in your email platform, and fields like membership level or last visit date stay current without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
When you evaluate any sync tool, ask:
- Does it use Altru queries you control, or a fixed set of fields chosen by the vendor?
- Does it update existing contacts, or only add new ones?
- How does it treat contacts who have unsubscribed on the email platform side?
- How often does it run, and what happens (and who gets notified) when a run fails?
Get the data clean before you connect anything
Whatever route you take, Constant Contact will faithfully copy whatever mess is in Altru. A few things to fix first:
- Duplicate constituents. Constant Contact keys contacts on email address, so two Altru records sharing an email collapse into one contact, and whichever row is imported last can overwrite the other’s fields, such as membership level. Merge duplicates in Altru first.
- Households. Decide whether you’re mailing individuals or one person per household. Couples who share an address often get two copies of every email otherwise.
- Stale emails. Bounces in Constant Contact are a useful list of addresses to correct or remove in Altru. Bring them back the same way you bring back unsubscribes.
A sensible way to roll it out
Start with one audience, usually active members, since that’s where personalization and timing matter most. Run the export for a month, check the bounce and unsubscribe numbers, and make sure the opt-out loop back to Altru actually happens. Then add donors, lapsed members, and visitors one at a time. Trying to sync everything on day one is how organizations end up with forty lists nobody trusts.
Where Social Good fits
Our Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and other tools, so the lists in your email platform reflect Altru without manual exports. If Constant Contact is your platform, ask us whether it’s supported for your setup before you commit to a plan; the cleanup and opt-out decisions above apply either way.
