Good luck, Tanya.

Hi Carey,

Here’s a kind of summary of my main difficulty with Nationbuilder, which ends up as a response to our comment.

Today I was asked to send a particular email blast to everyone who has donated to us.

This should be a basic thing. But, unbelievably, we cannot do this using Nationbuilder.

The reason we can’t do this, is because some records (such as couples, organisations and their primary contacts) which donate (or not) as separate entities have the same email address, which can only be attached to one of them; and some records have separate emails but make joint donations, which can only be attributed to one record.

NationBuilder could do any of three things to make this possible:

A) enable joint donations; or

B) enable two records to share the same email address, and one record to receive email at multiple email addresses; or

C) enable to filter by has x relationship with record which has y properties.

The way © helps is because if © were implemented, then I could filter for any record who has a primary contact relationship with a record which has donated. Or, I could store the spouses (who each have their own email address) of a donating couple, and any contacts of an organisation, as having a relationship with the couple record / organisation record with the word “contact” in the title, and then (when I wanted to choose the recipients for the email I’m talking about) I could filter for anyone who has a relationship with a title which contains the word “contact”, with an organisation who has donated.

Hope that makes sense.

---

//—-

That’s the technical side. As to the gist of your comment as I understand it, and particularly concentrated in the last two paragraphs of your comment: yes, absolutely. Couldn’t second you more strongly. Don’t know how to explain to my boss that I can’t send different emails to people/orgs who’ve donated, and those who can’t. Seems to be very basic to a CRM? Am thinking up creative analogies.

!!!

Hi Tanya. I see where you are going and I think I understand your objectives. While the filtering you suggest might well be helpful, I am having trouble seeing it in terms of usability. It is counter-intuitive for most that they would effectively have to nest a series of personal and/or organizational relationships in order to generate an effective list for donation thank you’s or for other purposes.

Imagine a use case where you wish to send out invitations to women (including female organization leaders and contacts) who have contributed over a certain amount. This would require a integrating a search for donor above a certain level, relationships where joint husband/wife donations meet the criteria, organizations meet the criteria (with a subquery on female contacts within the organization) and then pulling in shared email addresses for those who are not the contact that is listed with the shared email.

There are always methods for addressing this. Primarily, with NationBuilder, they call for a data export followed by search and manipulation in Excel and ending with reimport into NationBuilder. But while I am comfortable with such data manipulation, when the db is being manipulated by several people, issues will inevitably emerge. I know this from personal experience, as I have had to work with several colleagues to correct data issues. While that generates revenues, it is a waste of time.

Tanya, I appreciate your suggestion but we both realize that it is piling on process to work around a core product issue. Years in the enterprise software business has made it clear that this may be OK in the very short run, it is disastrous in the medium and long terms. I have been looking at other voter management systems and building procedures to pull regular NationBuilder updates to a master CRM. This would make my master data store external to NationBuilder, doubling my work.

NB would be much more powerful and effective as a CRM if the core issue were addressed. Perhaps these requests should be addressed to the senior executives, in the context of sales and revenues.

Hi Carey, I think I am thinking along the same lines as you when you talk about strengthening the relationship element of the product. What do you think of this http://nationbuilder.com/1024343/interrelationality_of_primary_contact_and_organisation ? (Sorry, it’s a bit long-winded.)

ALL – one idea which I have which would be helpful for the bigger problem which this is part of – make it possible to filter for everyone who has such-and-such a relationship of any organisation which had such-and-such a tag or had donated over a certain amount, this would help a lot.

At the moment if we want to email every record with a certain tag or who’s donated over a certain amount, this is extremely laborious because some of those records will not have an email address (because some organisations and their primary contacts have the same email address and this can only be attached to one record, and some couples share email addresses and this can only be attached to one record; also, some couples have separate email addresses but donate jointly, and the donation can only be attached to one record).

But if you enable the kind of filtering I’ve just suggested, then I can filter for everyone who’s donated over such-and-such an amount OR has such-and-such a relationship with (even if I have to build it in a few stages – would still be better than what is the case now).

Carey – Tanya made a great suggestion about attributing donations to more than one profile – that you might want to also follow & comment on – it sounds like you have more ideas on places where activities could be linked! http://nationbuilder.com/1024343/allow_donations_to_be_associated_with_more_than_one_sign_up

I suppose the difficulty with this issue is that there is no effective workaround. While the +xxx has some uses, it fails at the interactivity level (i.e. RSVP’s, petitions, donations) because the user will not know that, in NationBuilder, his/her email must include a +.

As NationBuilder is committed to keeping this element of their data design, I suggest they provide an effective workaround the the design flaw, something that will allow its high-value functions to be available without a data correction every time.

My thought is to strengthen the relationship element of the product. For example, if a Janet and John use the same email address, on data entry they could be linked. When they RSVP or donate, an additional level of logic could emerge, asking them whether they are Janet or John. This would complicate data import, amongst other things, but could address the issue.

The problem is not that the email is a unique identifier. It is that the use cases where individual share a single email address have not been addressed in the product. Even worse, it seems that NationBuilder does not see the need.

Hi Taylor

I have been trying to investigate (see below) the possibility of using the + to get around this issue as you suggest, but it doesn’t seem to work.

Say Jane and John Smith are both using the email address [email protected] to interact with Nationbuilder. I disentangle their combined profile into two separate ones, one with the name Jane Smith and the email address [email protected] – let’s say its id number is 341 – and one with the name John Smith and the email address [email protected] – id 342.

Now Jane comes along and RSVPs to an event, submitting her name “Jane Smith” and her email address – as she understands it – “[email protected]” … I’m not entirely sure what happens, from the answers given to me below, but I’m guessing it won’t treat this as an activity of and only of the signup profile 341.

Can you confirm that’s correct?

If that is the case, here’s a possible solution …

It seems from doing imports that, as well as email addresses and signup ids being treated as unique identifiers, Nationbuilder also treats data in certain combinations as unique identifiers (from memory often involving birthdate). So I guess if that capability exists for these combinations in that place (imports), it can be made for other combinations in other places (where people interact with Nationbuilder, ie., by RSVPing, signing petitions etc).

Could you make it so that when someone interacts with Nationbuilder with the name Jane Smith and the email address [email protected], it creates/logs activities on a profile with the name Jane Smith and the email address [email protected] ?

I mean – something like that. I’m not up on all the technical side of this – I’m hoping you could fill in that blank!

Thanks.

---

Original Message——-
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, 14 September 2016 1:23 AM

Hi T,

You will need to merge in to the existing profile with the personalized email variant after each instance of this.

Let me know if you need any assistance with that or have any additional questions.

Best,

Lem
NationBuilder Support
213.394.4623

>
> Hi Abe,
>
>
>
> Sorry about the confusion. It’s not for me. We have a number of couples who share an email address, but who in many cases donate separately, and obviously attend events and sign petitions as individuals. Say Jane and John share the email address [email protected] . Nationbuilder Support tell me what I can do is edit their profiles to make a separate profile for Jane Smith with that name and the email address [email protected] . But then what happens when Jane goes to sign a petition or RSVP for an event with her name, Jane Smith, and her email address (as she knows it) [email protected] ?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> T
>
>
>
> -—Original Message——-
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, 13 September 2016 10:06 AM
> Subject: Re: trying to put something on suggesion page – won’t let me post
>
>
>
> T,
>
>
>
> A new NationBuilder profile will be created in the database if you’re not logged in and you’re signing up on the petition/event using the T1 name and the [email protected] convention. You’ll want to make sure if you signup with the additional address [email protected] at any point that you are not logged into [email protected]. This is to avert any merging to the same profile.
>
>
>
> Let us know if you have any questions on this,
>
>
>
> Abe Huie
>
> Senior Frontline Organizer
>
> NationBuilder Technical Support
>
> <a class="tweet-url username" href="http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=abrahamhuie">abrahamhuie</a> &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; Hi folks, &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; Any word on this? &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; Thanks, &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; T &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; -----Original Message----- &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; Sent: Monday, 5 September 2016 7:30 AM &amp;gt; &amp;gt; &amp;gt; To: 'helpnationbuilder.com’
>
> > Subject: RE: trying to put something on suggesion page – won’t let me post
>
> >
>
> > Thanks Lauren.
>
> >
>
> > Now, if T1 and T2 both share this email address, what happens if T1 rsvps for an event / signs a petition, using that email address and their name T1?
>
> >
>
> > Thanks,
>
> > T
>
> >
>
> > -—Original Message——-
>
> > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
>
> > Sent: Saturday, 3 September 2016 5:39 AM
>
> > Subject: Re: trying to put something on suggesion page – won’t let me post
>
> >
>
> > Hi Tanya,
>
> >
>
> > You’re close! instead of putting the “t1+” in front of your email, you’ll want to follow your email with “+t1.” For example, if you change your email from [email protected] to [email protected], emails should come through. If you experience any further trouble with these addresses, please let us know.
>
> >
>
> > Best,
>
> > Lauren Rowse
>
> > NationBuilder Support
>
> >
>
> > >
>
> > > Thanks Kev. Sorted.
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > I’m trying to investigate the possibility of the work around mentioned by Brady on that page. So I “split” my own record into two, T1 M1 and T2 M2, with addresses [email protected]> and [email protected]> . I then sent a test email blast to these records. But it hasn’t yet arrived in my inbox at [email protected]> .
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > Have I misunderstood Brady’s instructions?
>
> > >
>
> > > Thanks,
>
> > > Tanya

I’ve just remembered there’s another very common example of shared email address – that is when an organisation and its primary contact share the same email address (this feeds into the issue of interrelationality between primary contact and organisation, which I will submit separately). The organisation and its primary contact person may donate separately, have different tags, etc.

When we go to email everyone who’s donated over a certain amount / to a certain campaign, has a certain tag, etc, a number of them come up as not emailable, because they don’t have an email address, because it’s attached to the other record. We have to manually switch them over each time – nightmare.

There’s one problem caused by this situation which I realised I haven’t elucidated here.

When we go to email everyone who’s donated over a certain amount / to a certain campaign, has a certain tag, etc, a number of them come up as not emailable, because they don’t have an email address, because it’s attached to the other record. We have to manually switch them over each time – nightmare.

Hi Taylor, I’m just exploring this +1 thing further …

Say two people called T1 and T2 both share an email address [email protected] , and we edit their signup records to be [email protected] and [email protected] . What happens if T1 rsvps for an event or signs a petition, using the email address [email protected] and their name T1? Will it somehow know how to log those activities and attribute the appropriate tags to T1’s signup record?

If not – do you think your engineers could think up a way to make that happen? This would be enormously helpful.

Thanks.

Taylor, I just realised I don’t whether your remarks also apply to the problem I raised with donations, so I’m going to log that as a separate issue. Thanks.

Taylor, NationBuilder is still fine for small campaigns. The issue is data management on a longer or longer term scale. For that, its issues are problems.

I understand that NationBuilder is not going to change. That is fine. I will continue to use it where it applies.

Thank you Taylor, I will bear that in mind.

Tanya & Carey – unfortunately this is not going to change. I understand if it is a deal breaker and we can help you at [email protected] transition your data out if you’d like.

Thanks Carey. I have been reluctant to explore other options until now, because of the amount of labour we have invested in Nationbuilder, but I think I have finally reached a tipping point. No point in having a CRM which doesn’t function as a CRM. So many person-days :’(

Best of luck to you too!

Thanks, Tanya. I am just as disappointed with Ian’s answer as you seem to be.

For what it is worth, you may want to investigate using another product as your CRM of record. I have used several, none of which have the same design flaw as NationBuilder, regarding the email address. Some have a much better ability to output email lists with calculated salutations (Mr. and Mrs., Dr and Mrs, etc). When doing this, it is often better to use a third party email product like MailChimp or Constant Contact. Unfortunately, doing this is a pain in the posterior.

I like NationBuilder but, for some reason, some of its underlying choices are weak, the email one being the most annoying from the communications side. However, as we can see in this thread, it is not something that the company sees as an issue, suggesting instead applying data workarounds that do not scale. One campaign that had about 50,000 contacts caused me person-days of extra effort.

I wish you good luck in your future campaigns. Let me know what alternatives to NationBuilder you find most effective.

I second 100% everything Carey says here (particularly the bits with the exclamation marks).

Having email as a unique identifier (problem (1)) has the exact opposite effect for us of what Jim describes: “ensur[ing] mass emails go to the right people and personalization works as expected.” Having email as a unique identifier makes it impossible to “ensur[ing] mass emails go to the right people and personalization works as expected.”

Problem (2) for us is that donations cannot be associated with two signup records, and hence with two email addresses. A number of people, generally spousal couples, make join donations. This means that if we want to send a special thank you by mass email to people with a certain donation history (i.e., have donated over a certain amount, or donated to a certain campaign) – particularly given problem (1), we can’t do this by filtering, otherwise we’d be sending the thank you to one half of the couple and creating a lot of offence – exactly the opposite of what we intend! The only way of doing at the moment is through a labour-intensive manual process, which *completely negates the purpose of having a database and having this product.*

These two problems make it impossible to have “mass emails go to the right people and personalization work… as expected” – the opposite of what Jim says. They are both, exactly as Carey says re problem 1, “GIANT ASS DESIGN FLAW[S] FOR A CRM PROGRAM!!!!!! PLEASE FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

And sorry Ian, your suggestion “If you’re finding that you have unique database challenges that are pushing you towards creating multiples of the same person, please consider discussing them with your organizer — who will be glad to help identify an elegant, scalable solution” really is very glib :( :( :( Our organiser never does anything of the sort, he just tells us stuff can’t be done (that’s a charitable paraphrase).

Jim, I appreciate your response. However, even with the tip, you are asking me to modify actual data. When exported to other applications, this would cause additional inconvenience.

I would prefer to look at NB as a voter management product, rather than a mass email product. I need to have the correct, real data associated with every profile. Currently, this is not possible.

Carey- We are very committed to email addresses being unique per individual person. I hear you that that’s not what you want, but we’ve found it’s the best way to ensure mass emails go to the right people and personalization works as expected.

A tip: If you put a + sign in an email address, it will ignore everything after that and still go to the original person, while still technically be unique. For instance, [email protected] and [email protected] would both go to [email protected].

More details here: http://notfaq.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/plus-sign-in-email-addresses/

I dislike answers that sound smug while being useless. Ian’s answer has the benefit of being both.

Many people, myself included, have data which includes more that a single person using the same email address. A basic example is that of a husband and wife who share the same email address. NationBuilder recommends that we address this by using the email address for only one of these partners. This, of course, makes sending personalized email to the partner for whom we have removed the email address impossible.

Using email as a unique identifier is a GIANT ASS DESIGN FLAW FOR A CRM PROGRAM!!!!!!

PLEASE FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!