Apple's release of the Hide My Email functionality allows their users to create unique, random email addresses to use with apps, websites, and more. As a whole, this may influence any tool in Virtuous that relies on email address data.
Here are some main Virtuous functionalities this can impact:
Contact Matching for Imports
Our Gift & Contact Import tool uses email address as a match qualifier. If an Apple user enters a randomly generated email address for any form submission, that means it likely won't match up with the email address used previously. This will make it more difficult for Virtuous to determine a potential match - therefore, you may see more contacts land in the "Match Needed" or "Updated Needed" tabs in the import tool.
Donor Portal
Because email addresses are required for online processing, each Virtuous Giving user account is tied to a specific email address. If a donor were to use two separate email addresses to make two separate online gifts, they would then have two separate Virtuous Giving accounts, each of which can be linked to the same Contact record in Virtuous.
So, while these can all be linked to the same Virtuous record, it will lead to several Virtuous Giving accounts for one record, which can lead to confusion for that donor. They will not be able to see all of their giving information in one single account, but rather several.
Social Insights
Through Social Insights, Virtuous utilizes the primary email address on an Individual record to find and match to public social media profiles. If an individual provides a randomly generated email address, it likely will not match up with the email address linked to any of their social media profiles, meaning this feature will not return any accurate information about the individual's social media presence.
Features That Should Not Be Impacted
- Sending any email communication - if the individual provides a randomly generated email, any email sent to it will be forwarded to their actual email, so they can still receive communications:
- Mass emails
- Workflow emails
- Personal emails
- Receipt emails
- Confirmation emails