WordFly is an email platform used by many arts and cultural organizations. Altru holds your constituents, members, donors, and ticket buyers. Getting the two to talk is mostly a data question: which records leave Altru, how often, and how opt-outs find their way back.
Start with one honest caveat. Integrations change, and we can’t promise what WordFly’s connector list looks like this month. Before you build anything, ask your WordFly account rep directly whether they currently offer a native Altru integration, what it syncs, and in which direction. If they do, use it and read the rest of this article as a checklist for setting it up well. If they don’t, the options below are how organizations typically make it work.
Three ways to get Altru data into WordFly
1. Export a query, import a file
The simplest route, and the one most teams start with. Build a constituent query in Altru with the fields you want to mail on, export it to CSV, and import that file into a WordFly list. It works, it costs nothing extra, and it’s easy to understand.
The weaknesses show up over time:
- The list is only as fresh as the last export. A member who renewed this morning still gets the “your membership has lapsed” email.
- Someone has to remember to do it, and it usually depends on one person.
- Column mappings drift. A renamed query field quietly breaks the import, or worse, lands data in the wrong column.
For a monthly newsletter to all members, this is often fine. For anything time-sensitive, like renewal reminders or post-visit sends, it gets painful fast.
2. Use an intermediate spreadsheet or sync tool
Many organizations put a step in the middle: Altru query results flow on a schedule into something like Google Sheets, and WordFly (or whoever maintains your email lists) pulls from there. Whether WordFly can import automatically from a hosted file or through its API is something to confirm in their current documentation or with support. If it can, this setup removes the manual export step without anyone writing custom code against Altru.
3. Custom integration through APIs
If you have developer help, you can build a direct connection using Altru’s data access options and WordFly’s API. This gives you the most control and the most maintenance. Be realistic about who will fix it when a field changes or a token expires two years from now.
Decide what to send before you decide how
The plumbing is the easy part. Most problems come from sending the wrong records or the wrong fields. Settle these first:
- A stable matching key. Include the Altru lookup ID (or constituent ID) on every record you send, and store it in a WordFly field. Email address alone is a poor key: households share addresses, people change them, and you’ll want to trace any WordFly contact back to its Altru record.
- Who is allowed in. Filter your query on email preferences and solicit codes so constituents who asked not to be emailed never reach WordFly. Exclude deceased and inactive records. Do this in the Altru query, not by hand after export.
- Segmentation fields. Membership level, expiration date, last visit date, donor status, and household role are the fields people most often want to segment on. Send them as separate columns rather than baking them into list names, so one list can serve several campaigns.
- Clean data. Duplicate constituents in Altru become duplicate contacts in WordFly, which means double sends and confusing unsubscribe behavior. Clean up obvious duplicates before your first big sync.
Don’t forget the trip back
This is where most Altru-to-email setups fall short. When someone unsubscribes in WordFly, Altru doesn’t know unless you tell it. The next export can then put them right back on a list, and if staff also send from Altru or another tool, that person keeps getting email they opted out of.
At minimum, set a routine:
- Export unsubscribes and hard bounces from WordFly on a regular schedule (weekly is a reasonable starting point).
- Match them to Altru records using the lookup ID you stored, falling back to email address.
- Update the constituent’s email preferences or solicit codes in Altru, and flag or remove bounced addresses using whatever method your organization already uses for bad email data.
- Make sure your next outbound query excludes them, so the change sticks.
If an integration you’re evaluating claims two-way sync, ask specifically whether unsubscribes and bounces write back to Altru, and to which fields.
A sensible way to roll it out
Start with a single list, such as current members, and run it for a month with manual exports so you learn which fields you actually use. Then automate that one list, verify the opt-out routine is working, and only after that add donors, lapsed members, or ticket buyers. Small and correct beats a big sync nobody trusts.
Where Data Bridge fits
If the manual export is the part you want to retire, Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and other tools, which can replace the manual export step. Ask us whether WordFly is a supported destination for your setup, or whether a Sheets-based handoff is the better fit.
