How Do People Get Added To My Action Network Group?
We're often asked how certain activists have found their way into your Action Network Groups, and although this information is available in other articles on this site here we'll pull together all the way that this can happen.
What Are The Systems Involved In These Processes?
It might be helpful to understand what each of our systems is, and how they work together to achieve certain things. The key systems involved in the processes we'll go through in this article are:
- Chargebee: This is our membership billing system. It's the system behind the Join Site and Membership Portal (the place you go to manage your membership online).
- Salesforce: This is what's known as a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). It's where we hold all the information on our Members and Activists.
- Action Network: This is our digital campaigning tool, allowing different party Groups to communicate and engage with activists and members.
- MapIt: This is an online tool that uses postcode and address information to look up geographically determined values- such as a member's Local Authority,
- Zapier: This is a tool that we use to enable communication between different systems. We won't explicitly state where Zapier is used in the processes in this guide, but when one system is sending or receiving information from another it's likely that Zapier is the platform that enables that communication.
What Are The Different Kinds Of Activists?
It's also worth knowing what we mean when we refer to different groups of people.
- Activists: This is a catch-all term that we use to refer to anyone who exists within Action Network.
- Members: These are those who have paid to join the Green Party.
- Supporters: These are people who have signed up to receive email updates from us, but who haven't yet gone on to become a member.
- Friends: Friends of the Green Party are those that have donated to the party at least once, who have not joined as members.
It's important to understand that people can move between these different categories. A Friend or Supporter may go on to become a Member, and a Member may cancel but remain as a Supporter. We tend to refer to the latter as former-members rather than Supporters though.
New Members
The bulk of your list will hopefully be made up of members who live within your local or regional party area. When a member signs up a number of processes happen behind the scenes to assign them to the correct Action Network Groups. In most circumstances, members will be assigned to their local party within 24 hours of joining.
When someone chooses to join the Green Party and signs up via the join site their information will be passed to Chargebee, and quickly onto Salesforce. At this point they'll be added to Action Network, but only subscribed to the main GPEW mailing list, as we haven't defined their local and regional party value yet.
Overnight, their postcode will be sent from Salesforce into MapIt to look up their local authority, ward, and parliamentary constituency. This information is returned to Salesforce, which uses these values to assign the local and regional party for the member.
This information is sent to Action Network, which triggers a ladder to assign, and subscribe the member to their correct local and regional party groups. Each new member living in England & Wales should therefore be subscribed to three Groups when they first join- the GPEW Group, their local, and regional party. Any member joining from outside England & Wales will only be added to the main GPEW Action Network Group.
Members Who No Longer Live In Your Party Area
You may find that you have members who don't live in your local party area. There are a couple of reasons that these members may exist in your list, so we'll start with the obvious one– members who have moved out of your area.
When a member updates their address details via the Green Party Member's Site, their information is updated in Chargebee. Their new details are passed, almost immediately to both Salesforce and Action Network.
Salesforce sends their new postcode to MapIt to determine their Local Authority, Ward and Parliamentary Constituency. This information is updated on their Salesforce record and their new local and regional party values are updated.
If there's been a change to their local party value, this information is sent to Action Network and a Ladder is used to subscribe them to their new Action Network Group.
They are not removed from their previous local and regional parties, but as their local_party value has been updated they can be excluded from emails intended for local party members only.
To learn how to send an email that targets only your current local party members check this guide: How To Send An Email Which Targets Only Your Current Local Members.
A similar process happens when Friends or Supporters update their details. Friends can update their details through the Membership Portal, the same as Members. Supporters can only update their addresses via Action Network, but this will still send their details to Salesforce to allow local party mapping to take place.
Supporters & Members From Other Local Party Areas
When an Activist completes an Action created by your Group they have the option of opting in to updates from you. Although some Actions may be targeted only at local party Members- such as an AGM, other Actions may have broader appeal- Fundraisers, Letter Writing Campaigns and Events for example. This means that you may find yourself lucky enough to have a wide range of Activists with whom you can engage.
It's important that you understand how to identify and segment these different Groups so that you can target your emails effectively. The cohort you should be engaging with most is that of your local party members, but you shouldn't neglect the other cohorts as it becomes less likely you'll be able to reengage them in future.
Learn more about identifying different cohorts of your mailing list here: Useful Queries To Make Campaigning Easier.
Historic Supporters
It's likely you have a lot of historic supporters on your mailing list. When we switched to Action Network we asked each local party to let us know if they'd like us to transfer information about their supporters to their new Action Network Group. For any Groups that opted-in to this their previous Supporter lists were imported.
If you've been engaging with these supporters regularly you have nothing to worry about. If you haven't been engaging with these supporters in any way then it's important to have a plan as to how you will reengage them and if they still belong on your list.
We'll be publishing guides on how to reengage these members and carry out a managed reduction in mailing list size in the future, so keep checking the Digital Support Site for fresh content.
Duplicate Activist Records
You may find that you have duplicate Activists in your mailing list. This isn't something to worry about, but you may wonder why they are there.
The most common reason they exist more than once in your list is that they've completed an Action using a different email address than they were previously registered with. It's not uncommon for someone to have several email addresses, and it can be easy for Activists to forget which one their membership or existing record is associated with.
In most cases duplicate records can be merged, but it's important to check with the Activist first to ensure we have their preferred email address recorded, and don't accidentally merge records of two people with the same name.
Should I Remove Non-Members?
We'll be publishing more guidance on this soon. There's no need to remove non-members, unless you're planning to never engage with them. Once Activists are removed from your Action Network Group it's difficult to re-add them, so this should be considered fully by the committee making the request. However, we shouldn't be holding onto Activist details for the sake of it.
Should I Remove People From Outside My Party Area?
Again this depends on whether you wish to engage with these Activists in future. If someone has signed up to hear updates from you then it suggests they're engaged in some way, but if there is no plan to keep in contact with these Activists then it's might be best to remove them. Please raise a support ticket if this is something you want to discuss.
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