automating the publication volume number and issue number

[Michelle_Tizian]

I'm wondering if anyone might have any suggestions for automating our publication volume number and issue number.  It  ISSN 1945-8622 Volume 21, Number 23

The volume number changes once a year at the end December 31. The Issue number changes weekly on Fridays.  Any thoughts?  

I'm trying to help our editor and proofreaders because we all forget to change or proof read that minor detail.  Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated. 

[Anonymous]

How large is your database?

I don't know if this is the best solution, but you could have two score fields (Issue Volume and Issue Number) that updates for all records each week and year. Then you can use a token to reference the field.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Carol, 

The number of subscribers for this publication is about +/- 2000.  Our paid and sponsor subscribers usually fluctuates every week. Then we also have the trial subscribers which also fluctuate and they range anywhere from 1 to 100.  

Would you be able to provide a step by step?  I've never done anything similar to your suggestion and would like to explore it. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

A score field and a token in your email referencing the value in that field could work, but the trick is every lead would need the same value in that field. 

You would create a Number score type field and set its value to the current number of the week in all the lead records (e.g. 24 for this week).  Then you would create a smart campaign, that is scheduled to run at the start of each week.  It would have a Change Score flow action that increments the Number field by 1 as in the following screen shot.



You would follow a similar process for the Volume field, but the smart campaign would only increment its value by 1 each year.

The trick is every time you add a new lead, you will have to ensure that the values in these fields are set to the current values, which likely means that every week you will need to update a smart campaign that sets these values in new leads, so I'm not sure that this approach solves the problem of rembering to increment the Volume and Number value each week / year.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Elliott and Carol,

The suggestions you mentioned above actually makes sense, but I think it might be harder to do when we do have new subscribers.  But I am using the suggestions above for something else.  Yeah!