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What is the difference between Broadcasters, Supporters, Prospects, and Non-Supporters?

Official response from Lilia Villa

Broadcasters:  the voices of your nation. They can be your organization, yourself, your staff, or anyone else you want interacting with your supporters. You can set up multiple broadcasters and the communications of each broadcaster are managed and tracked from their individual dashboards under the Messages tab. Broadcasters are different than the people in your database, and they do not have person records. You can allow all people with control panel level permissions to access and communicate as a broadcaster, or limit them to only a single person. All outgoing communications from your nation go through a broadcaster. They can send email and text blasts, and can receive text messages and voicemails.

This video from NationBuilder Live walks you through the communication features associated with a broadcaster:

The "Communications and broadcasters" video is also available in high definition on our YouTube channel.

Primary Broadcaster: When you go to Websites > [Website Name] > Site settings, you will see a place there for specifying a broadcaster.  That determines what Facebook page, Twitter account, and who the main email auto-responses in your nation come from. The broadcaster chosen must have an email account associated with it. 

In this video from NationBuilder Live, C.J. explains the difference between supporters, prospects and non-supporters. 

Supporters: your nation’s advocates and opt-ins for messaging. People are automatically added as a supporter when they subscribe to your email updates, follow you on Twitter, donate/volunteer on the website, or choose to receive text messages. Twitter followers are included because you are able to use direct message functionality to start one-to-one communication with them.  

Prospects: people you have to convince before you can gain their support and convert them into advocates and opt-ins. In a political campaign, prospects would be your potential voters. People are automatically added to your nation as prospects when they mention your broadcaster on Twitter, retweet your broadcaster or like a post on your Facebook Page. Be exceedingly careful in contacting prospects via any kind mass email - here are some tips for conducting outreach without spamming.

Non-Supporters: people who do not want to receive emails from you and haven’t taken any action. They are in your database because they have unsubscribed or have tweeted about you but are not following you. 

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Showing 6 reactions


C.J. MinsterCheng commented 2013-05-13 17:23:11 -0700 · Flag
You can change a person’s support level by editing the person’s profile, on a scale of 1-5, with one indicating a high level of support and 5 indicating a high level of opposition. Setting a person’s support level in this manner will supersede the label given when a broadcaster’s Twitter followers are pulled into your nation.

In addition to the political examples in the comments to this FAQ, business competitors may opt-in to communication from a company. Similarly, activists have been known to opt-in to communication from a business they are targeting for reform.

If you know that one of the people who have opted into communication from your nation is an opponent of your mission, you can change a person’s support level to reflect the additional information you know about them.
Barbara Richard commented 2013-05-05 07:24:55 -0700 · Flag
The supporter definition has some seriously flawed logic. Is that feature configurable? The fact that someone is a Twitter follower doesn’t imply they are a supporter. It is common practice in political campaigns to sign up to see what information competing campaigns may be broadcasting.
Ben Harris commented 2013-04-22 06:08:26 -0700 · Flag
This is one of the top annoying “features” of NationBuilder. The automatic labeling people as “Supporter” has already caused trouble for the campaign I work for. As confirmed by a NB rep, even someone who is strongly CRITICIZING our candidate on Twitter can be labeled a “supporter” – a fact that others (including campaign staff) might not understand right away. I don’t assume that everyone who follows my candidate or signs up for email newsletters is “friendly” to the campaign.

I would MUCH rather this label be something like “Active”, “Prolific”, or “Vocal” so that we could see someone tagged as “active” “NO vote” “critic” (for example), whereas you will have to pay careful attention to see that we may actually have “supporter” “NO vote” “critic”. Please either change the wording, or allow me to configure that somewhere.
Ben Harris tagged this with Important 2013-04-22 06:02:11 -0700
Jerimee Richir commented 2013-03-19 10:33:02 -0700 · Flag
note – some of the terms have slightly changed

Primary Broadcaster: When you go to Websites > Site Settings, you will see a place there for specifying the “main” broadcaster. That determines what Facebook page, Twitter account, and who the main email auto-responses in your nation come from.
Sue Beckwith tagged this with Important 2013-03-13 06:46:53 -0700