Thank you to everyone who attended our Organization Features Webinar on Wednesday, September 20th! Did you miss the webinar? Don’t worry - we have it recorded and are doing it again on October 25th!
We didn’t get to all questions in the webinar so as promised I wanted to make sure to answer all of them here on our blog.
User Submitted Events
User-submitted events are a great way for people who are supporters of your Organization to host an event in their own space, invite their own friends and really take ownership of spreading the word.
Do user-submitted events only work on NationBuilder hosted pages? - yes, you’ll need to have a NationBuilder calendar set up to be able to accept user submitted events on your NationBuilder site.
Are there ways to moderate User Submitted Events & can a user include an image in an event? - Yes! Moderation is possible with page tags - But we also want to make this process easier and our event team is thinking about ways you can moderate user-submitted events now - you can sign up to see a demo and talk directly to our product team. They are also testing out ways that a user can add an image to an event, right now it is not possible.
What steps have been taken to address the spam that comes through user-submitted events? - In an instance of spam on a user submitted event page we sometimes will suggest shutting down the user events for a few hours while the spammers move on. It’s also important to note that they do not have any access to your control panel or data. This is also something the events team is thinking about while they work on updates.
Memberships
Memberships can help you keep your supporters involved and guarantee monthly donations!
Is there a place for a date the person became a member? - Yes, you can see where someone became a member in their profile under edit > memberships. You can also export your membership list and see all start and expiration dates.
Can you specify which type of member accesses info on your site? - No, unfortunately not right now it’s all members or none but there is a conversation about this you might want to follow on our suggestion page.
Any benefit to making folks who sign up to receive e-news a membership type? - Interesting question! The only thing I can think of is having sections of your site for members only - but in this case, you could just have sections for logged in only and that would achieve the same thing!
For a paid membership, can you explain the difference between using donation and invoicing? - If a membership is set up via donation your member can process the donation right away - via invoice they will be emailed a copy of the invoice and directed to the payment page. Whichever is your preference.
Permission Sets
Ready to let other people into your control panel? The Organization plan allows up to 5 customized permission sets.
Do you allow permission sets to be limited to certain pages? - Not at the moment LINK to Public Issue
Can we limit people who we have made as point persons from seeing financial activity stream? - Yes - permission sets will limit the ability to see activities anywhere they may happen to display in the nation.
Texting
Text messages have a 98% open rate! We have done a lot of strategic work via text messages and you can read further in our howto - watch our text messaging strategy webinar - and check out a blog on how you can Grow your community with text messaging.
Can people opt-in without using email? - Yes, they will be in your nation with just a name and phone number. You can also turn off the requirement to submit an email in the text auto-responses.
Is there a character limit on text messages? - Yes - the limit is 160 and you also have to include ‘txt STOP to leave’ in all blast texts.
Can we text only certain people who have opted into specific reminders? - You can set up a text blast just like an email blast and send to a list, filter or tag just like an email blast! It will automatically remove anyone who has not opted into receiving texts.
Can you set up the phone number so that you only utilize the texting feature and not have it open for people to actually call? - Yes! You don’t have to give anyone your number or even set up any of the phone call settings, you definitely only use it for texting.
A/B Testing
Are you looking to get more email clicks and interactions? A/B testing your subject line can help you send what your community responds best to.
How did you pick the emails for an A/B test? - When setting up the email you choose how many people you want to have as part of the A/B test out of your recipients. The test group will be chosen randomly from the group you are sending to.
When it says send to remaining, what does that mean because everyone already received either the A or the B? Would that mean that the A group will get two emails? - It will just send to the remaining recipients so nobody will get the email twice! The test only sends to a portion of the list.
Are there requirements for A/B tests for them to be able to send out the winner to the remaining participants automatically? - Yes! In your settings, you can send it to go out automatically to the winner once the test has run.
Can you test for a couple of hours for A/B? - The larger your list, the more data you can collect in a shorter period of time. Note that A/B testing is often not meaningful for lists smaller than 21,000 recipients because of the data needed to accurately declare results.
Other questions we didn’t get to cover:
Can NationBuilder automatically email political representatives? - Yes! You can do this via our app partners.
Does NationBuilder offer tax receipts in a .pdf? - Not at the moment but it is a very popular suggestion that you can follow.
