I'd love to hear some guidance on how anybody uploads supporters into multiple groups at one time. The documentation is a little thin on the protocol for exactly how to do that (I'm guessing it's either boolean, with fields named with group ID numbers, perhaps?)

I'm looking to upload spreadsheets of supporters from meetings, but into multiple groups at once (We use groups to manage all of our many separate email lists). I used to do this by querying the source details after upload, to get the uploaded supporters and move them into a second or third group.

The docs mention it, but I couldn't quite find the details I needed.

Tagged: Supporter Management

I'd love to hear from people using listservs. And specifically, if anyone has successfully been able to append a footer or a header onto the message. We've been trying like crazy to get the footer we're entering to show up in messages (so people can click a link to unusbcribe), but have had no luck in getting it to append. Has anyone else figured this out?

And anybody want to share some listserv success/fail stories? It's not something that gets talked about much here, and the documentation isn't nearly comprehensive or detailed enough.

Tagged: listserve, Email, Supporter Management

Question about mass-emailing people who are not on your list:

So we have a conference that folks interested in our issue attend every year. And the organizers recently gave us the list of all attendees from the last three years. (They hand a hard copy out to all attendees each year too. It's a bit of networking) We want to email them to invite them to take action or sign up, but per DiA's usage, we of course aren't going to email them directly through DIA or upload them, since they weren't signing up for us at the time.

We want to send them a once-off message offering them a chance at action or signing up. If they don't do anything, they don't get emailed again. I'm leery at putting them in a regular email and sending out due to possibly raising the spam profile of our server (isn't that a viable concern?)

Any ideas how to email this list that first time? Anyone done somethign similar?

Tagged: spam, upload, Email, Supporter Management

When can we expect the new Congress to have their information updated into Salsa? Is there going to be a way to contact incoming folks before they take office in January?

Tagged: action, new congress, Salsa

Does anyone prefer at least the flow of the old Actions module? It seems that going from one click (enter information and click submit) to TWO clicks (enter zip code, click submit, enter more information, click submit again) would cut down on action rates. We're still using the old actions module because the one-click seems to result in higher action rates, though I guess it will eventually be unsupported. Curious to know if anyone was thinking the same thing or what DIA thinks about this.

Obviously, having the zip+4 entered on the front end ensures proper targeting, which is certainly ideal.

Tagged: actions, Campaigns, Salsa

Has anyone had any luck merging targeted information for phone calls into an email?

Here's what we'd like to do. We'd like to send an email where everyone gets their Reps name and phone number inserted into the email as a merge field. The more clicks we can cut out, the more calls will happen, and relying on an Actions 2.0 or 3.0 page to show contact information means clicking in an email to load an action page, entering zip code, potentially looking up zip+4 data, and then loading contact information for delegation and making a call. (Though we could be targeting people who are action takers and we already have this information for them.)

In the past, we've often used a questionnaire page for the calls and provided the switchboard number so we can get feedback and captures from the calls.

Does anyone have a solid tried and true way to insert Rep data into the email as a merge field or some other streamlined way for calls that they prefer? I'd love to hear how others do phone call actions through the existing tools and make them most effective.

Tagged: Salsa, Email

One of my standing requests with forms and pages in DIA is to have more available CSS selectors and block level elements to have full control over styling the appearance of anything and everything in a DIA hosted page to make it match our visual style and branding. As anyone knows who has ever created their own styles for DIA pages and forms, it's always been sort of hit or miss — mostly hit, but there are always a few frustrating things that didn't get a block level element and can't be styled how one might like. Old petition sigs come to mind.

This has been a pretty longstanding issue that doesn't appear to be getting better in Actions 3.0, it's actually getting worse. Or at least much more difficult to find the selectors that are there.

It's a fairly. recurring. request. here on Salsa Commons. It seems every time someone mentions it, there are a bunch of "me toos!" that ring out in our lovely forum.

The two recurring workarounds are 1) Create custom pages entirely (works well with donation pages 2) use the web developer toolbar to see the code being hidden inside the javascript (never tried, but Chrome's devtools won't show it.) These suggestions might be functional, but they're really workarounds for what should be a more obvious solution:

1) Add definable CSS IDs and classes for every element on any pages (Actions 3, forms, donation pages, etc.)
2) Provide a single documentation source that lists every definable CSS element in DiA's default stylesheet and where it's used. Like a full page with some images saying "this is the textarea and this is the #textarea.content" and so forth.

At least with Actions 1.0 and other static pages, you could at least see the CSS selectors by simply viewing the source code of the page. Not everything had an class or id, but they weren't hidden in the javascript. I understand the move towards dynamic pages and content being served with JS or JSON elements, but it's making it significantly harder to find the CSS elements and find them to style them.

In Actions 3.0, some elements are picking up something applicable in the 300 lines of CSS I've written for DIA for us over the last 3 years, but others are clearly not and have the ID or CLASS hidden in Java.

So my great big recurring request is to a) add CSS elements for every piece of content on a page and b) provide a nice concise list of what they all are so we can see them. I'd be glad to help where I can. We've certainly found and defined our share of them.

Thanks!

Tagged: Salsa, Advocacy Campaigns

Where can I find the CSS calls for the Actions 2.0 module? If you view the source of a page, everything is hidden via the javascript, making it impossible to see what CSS (petition content, textarea) is defining the page. (So I can overwrite them) Are these CSS terms for Actions 2.0 advocacy pages located anywhere in the support forums? If someone can point me to them, I would be helpful. I'm guessing there's a DIA stylesheet or JS styles I can load somewhere that I'm missing.

Tagged: action, Advocacy, campaign, Email

Anyone know how to replace the 'read and edit' and 'sign and send' message graphics? I know how to hide them with the display:none CSS argument, but is there a way to replace them? I know they're stored in our root ourDIAdomain.org/dia/images folder, which I don't think I can access through Salsa or FTP.

Any ideas as to how to replace them? I tried using a background: url() argument, but then the old images show up still — just with a new background.

Tagged: actions, Campaigns, css, HTML, image, Website Features

The new email templates won't respect the option to let me see and edit them while creating an email. While creating or editing the new email templates, I check the box along the way to make it editable so that it should show up in the FCK editor when I create a blast with it, right?

Except when I create a blast, there is nothing in the HTML content box. If I save it and preview it, it has the header and footer (basically the area outside the templateeditable tags)

And in addition, I've tried looking at that new list of email templates that has a "true/false" option for "edit templates" (Not explained anywhere). I've tried it on false, I've tried it on true, and I have no idea what else to do. (Points for rhyming.)

Should I just leave out the "template editable" tags? I always edit our templates due to the inflexibility of having those tags in there for adding callout boxes, tables, graphics, etc... But I've always kept the tags in there for other people to use to have a simpler option.

Tagged: Donations, Website Features

There are a still some issues with the Actions 2.0 module that are a bit of a pain. One that has been a huge problem for us here is the interface for adding/deleting recipients in the multi-content actions. Taking advantage of the thank/spank capability needs to be more streamlined to encourage its use — right now, it's painful and time-consuming to keep an action current. Setting it up is not too bad, but keeping it current is a pain.

We do a lot of work on active legislation that is constantly fluctuating in sponsors and support. Moving legislators from the "please support this bill" to the "thanks for sponsoring" group is a serious pain right now.

All of our folks that use the 2.0 module dread having to change the legislators targeted for each letter. It is impossible to add/subtract multiple legislators in one step. Unlike other parts of the Salsa interface, like the way we can target groups in email blasts with the add and remove buttons.

Adding a single legislator to an already created list isn't too bad. But deleting one means rebuilding the list. And if you are constantly getting new legislators on board and want to keep an ongoing action current, the interface is really discouraging to do so.

Any ideas about how to smooth this out before 2.0 becomes default? We still use the current Actions tool extensively, for this and many other reasons. (two-click process, which I've talked about in other threads.)

Tagged: actions 2.0 legislator target interface, Salsa

If I take a recent message (built with a template) and use the copy and recycle content option, the new email tool doesn't respect the content that should be appearing inside when I try to edit — it defaults to the placeholder text of the template.

To clarify, I hit copy and recycle and then edit the new blast. On the new email workflow, the template choice screen comes up first, with the template selected that this cloned email used. But if I either hit save and continue OR just hit the "content" tab directly, when that page comes up, the content in the email is just the placeholder text from the email template. The old content from the copied email disappears.

This same problem happens whenever we're building a new email and go back to the template page. If you've spent 30 minutes creating an email, and then go back to the beginning of the workflow (the template selection page) for some reason and try to come back to the content page, the tool has replaced all of your content with either the empty template or the placeholder text if you have some like I do.

Which has caused massive headaches for some of my colleagues who lost entire emails after they created them.

This seems to be the same issue —- the template screen replaces the blast content that should be there -- cropping up in two different places.

Tagged: Email

(I've brought this up before but always inside other threads. So I'm giving it its own thread.)

Is anyone else dreading the day that the old actions module goes away and 2.0 leaves beta and becomes default? Here's why I ask:

Every study in the world that I've read on online advocacy metrics (NTEN, PX, etc) says that number of clicks required for an action drives down action rates. More clicks = less action, right?

I understand that Actions 2.0 gives you this multi-content targeting capability, which is terrific. Thank or spank is much easier, etc. I've seen the features and they're great. More targeted messages, getting to see your legislator, etc.

What is NOT great is that as far as I can tell, there's no way to ever have a one click action again for people using it. Everyone has to enter a zip code and click a button before they can see the rest of the page, meaning that they essentially have to hit 2 "submit" buttons, which will drastically lower response rates on any campaign we set up. Messages will be better targeted, but we'll have fewer recruits, and fewer messages sent.

The idea of targeted multi-content actions is a great idea, but I'm not crazy about the implementation. Seems like the thought of potential negative side effects hasn't been clearly explored.

It would be nice at the very least to have an option in the future to use a single-click page if we're one day going to lose the old actions module. Or a script so that when people tab out of the zip code box, their legislator(s) appear, reducing the need for that first click.

Is anyone else thinking about this? Surely we're not the only ones still using the old actions module faithfully for this reason. Anyone else share this concern?

Tagged: actions, actions 2.0, Advocacy, beta, Website Features