Content
Overview
The ACTIONS tab is the place to create, manage and track actions. Using actions will help keep your staff, organizers and volunteers engaged in your work by giving them an opportunity to organize using the Impactive app.
Accessing Actions
Log into admin via app.impactive.io and click on the ACTIONS tab in the left-hand menu. Here you will see ALL existing actions. You can also filter your actions by “Status” (closed, deleted, draft, published, scheduled) for all actions, and “Status” (closed, draft, sent, scheduled) for broadcast. Click on each individual action type within the ACTIONS menu to view and manage only those actions.
Click on an individual action to:
View the action's settings
Edit the action details, including updating target user lists, scripts and updating status
Access performance metrics under "View Results”
Creating Actions
There are three ways to create a new action:
from the ACTIONS tab. In the main ACTIONS tab that lists all actions, click on the “+ Create New” button in the upper right corner and select the action type from the drop-down menu.
within an individual action type in the ACTIONS tab. Click on the individual action type in the left-hand menu and click on the “+ Create Action” button.
copying the action from a previous action by going to an action, clicking on the "Manage Action" drop down menu, and selecting "Copy Acton." From there you will be able to make any needed edits before publishing.
Types of Actions
Peer to Peer: Ask volunteers to text bank on behalf of the campaign to a list of cold contacts (only available on certain plans)
Friend to Friend: Ask volunteers to text their existing contacts
Canvassing: Ask volunteers to outreach from either a shared or assigned list of cold contacts
Social Sharing: Ask volunteers to help amplify messages on their social platforms
Video Stories: Ask volunteers for videos testimonials directly from supporters
Surveys: Ask volunteers to complete survey questions, or fill out a form directly within Impactive
Open a Webpage: Ask volunteers to RSVP to events, sign a petition, etc. As long the ask is on the webpage, we can support deep-linking to a site from Impactive
Voter Registration: Motivate your volunteers to register voters by leveraging a branded voter registration page.
Setting Up Your Action
Every action will include a list of required and optional fields. Fill out the fields based on your action needs. The following list describes the functionality of each field in the BASIC INFORMATION section:
Media Upload (optional): Upload an image for users to see to go along with the call to action that shows up in their app.
Action Type (required): Shows you the action type selected.
Folder (optional): Send the action to a folder or group of user lists.
Select a list to target (optional): Target a single list that you have imported or synced from your data provider. Otherwise, the most common used list from our defaults is “All Contacts.”
In District (Friend to Friend, Surveys, optional): Enables the "In District" filter, which segments your action to contacts of a specific district.
Title (required): This is the title your supporters will see in the app in bold.
Description (required): This is where you describe the action you want your supporters to take in the app.
Disclaimer (optional): Create a disclaimer at the bottom of your action that can serve as a helpful tooltip for your volunteers.
Start Button Label (required): This is what the button will say in the app when users start the action. "Start" will be used by default, or you can select a number of options like "Learn More", "Find Friends", “Share”, “Retweet”, “Sign Up” and more.
Preferred Area Codes (Peer to Peer, optional): Provide a comma-separated list of area codes you would prefer to use for your peer-to-peer messaging. Impactive will use the provided area codes if numbers are available, but cannot guarantee all area codes for every provisioned number.
Contact Autofilters
In setting up Friend to Friend actions, you'll see an optional section called CONTACT AUTOFILTERS, however, you can skip this section if you do not need electoral filters. This feature allows you to pre-set filters for your volunteers based on which of their friends you want them to contact. Volunteers can change these filters, but they'll see the contacts matching the preset filters first.
The following list describes the functionality of each field:
Political Party (optional): Filter contacts by registered political party. Options include Republican and Democrat. To reset this filter, select the blank option.
Voter Frequency (optional): Filter contacts by how often they vote according to the voter file. Options include Super, Frequent, and Infrequent. To reset this filter, select the blank option.
In District (optional): Use this toggle to filter contacts by whether they are in one of the districts specified for the activity or campaign.
Scripts for Messaging
Next, if you're creating a texting action, you will need to update the SCRIPTS FOR MESSAGING section. Scripts are suggested messages that volunteers can easily copy-paste when texting their friends.
When the Scripts Image toggle is enabled, the action image will be attached to the initial script(s) when your volunteers complete this action. Maximum file size for outgoing texts is 0.6 MB.
Friend to Friend actions allows you to create scripts for Text, Email, Phone Calls, and Social Media Messages.
A Text initial script is required and will be the default script if other script types are not present. This script will display when a user chooses 'text' or if other initial script types are empty. Enter a space for the script to enable sending an image without text.
Email won’t appear as an option if there is no email address for that contact.
Phone Call scripts add talking points that display when users choose 'call'.
Social Messages add initial scripts that users can easily copy and share to social media and paste into direct messages to their connections.
You can create one or multiple initial and response scripts.
Users can edit and personalize the script before sending.
Insert variables like Contact Info, User Info, Campaign Info, and Links into your script using the buttons. You can also use custom fields as variables. Learn more on our help page Actions: How to Use Dynamic Variables for Texting.
In the Advanced Options of RESPONSE SCRIPTS, you can apply a tag or custom field to their record when a contact is sent the script. This enables you to automate tags and custom fields to the contact if they are sent the response script.
Report Settings
In the REPORT SETTINGS section, choose the tags and custom fields you want to appear when users fill out reports about their activities. To learn more about creating tags and custom fields, visit our help page Settings: Using Customized Tags and Custom Fields.
Pro-Tips
For texting actions, we recommend a few best practices:
Stay colloquial - casual texts yield higher response rates than formally crafted ones.
Make your texts actionable - every message should have some sort of follow-up. A yes/no question? A link to click? A deeper way to follow up?
Coordinate with your social media and email marketing team(s) - get an understanding of when your audience is online, and when users are most engaged in your campaign. You will get more frequent (and more friendly) responses when people are attentive to their phones, rather than at distracted or busy times of the day.
Test, test, test! Don't be afraid to test new language, and see what sticks.
Non-Texting Actions
Non-texting actions will not include script options. Instead, each action will have unique components to set up the action.
Social Sharing
Surveys
Open A Webpage
Social Sharing
“Share Link” (required): a URL link including http:// or https:// to either the content you'd like to share, or the content you'd like for your supporters to share.
“Sample Message Copy” (required): enter text that your users can share to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This can also be edited and personalized by your volunteers before they share.
Visit our help page Social Sharing: Creation + Management for more details.
Surveys
True/False Questions: Create a toggle that volunteers can swipe to indicate a given option is “true” for them. These toggles must be created as tags in the DATA > Tags menu tab. Answers will automatically mark contacts with the corresponding tag.
Open Questions: Create your own custom questions through custom fields in the DATA > Custom Fields tab. Answers will automatically mark contacts with the corresponding custom field.
Visit our help pages Surveys Overview, Action: Fill a Form, and Actions: How to Create Tags and Custom Fields per Action for more details.
Open A Webpage
Web Link (required): a URL link including http:// or https:// that users will land on when they start the action.
Voter Registration
Hero image upload for desktop and mobile
For the “hero upload," we recommend a 1600x778px image vs. 800x1200px image for the mobile hero upload. Keeping within 1:1 or 3:2 ratio. You can upload videos and pictures up to 2mbs.
Join video
Registration goal
Incentives
Publishing Actions
There are several options for saving and publishing actions after set up. You can either schedule the action to be published at a specific time in the future or click on the “Make Public” button after saving it as a draft.
Save As Draft
Any action saved without a scheduled publish time and date will be saved as a draft. In other words, if you want to save your action as a draft, do not assign a publishing time and date to your post.
An action that is saved as a draft WITH a scheduled publish time will be marked as "Scheduled." Hover over the 'Scheduled' tag on the action to see the date and time that it is set to be published.
Publish Options
Publishing an action is the act of taking the action live and making it visible to either the public or a particular group of users.
Public: when an action is visible to all users. Once an action is made public, it cannot be made private.
Private: when an action is only visible to a list or select users.
To send to a list: Save the action as a draft, then click on the “Send to User List” button.
To send to a user(s): Go to the USERS tab and check the box next to the user(s) you want to share the action with. Click on the “Select an action” drop-down menu and choose "Send an Action".
Select Districts: when an action is only visible to users in particular districts.
In the READY TO PUBLISH? section, click the “Add A District” button under "Limit publishing to specific districts". Choose one or many districts to limit which volunteers will be able to see this action when it is published.
Specific Languages: makes an action visible to users in both/either English or Spanish.
In the READY TO PUBLISH? section, use the drop-down menu under "Limit publishing to specific language". Only users who have selected that language on their Impactive volunteer app will see this action.
Sharing Actions
Once an action is published, admins can share the action without having to send it to a user list. Under SHARE OPTIONS, simply copy and paste the Web or App Link across your network of volunteers over email, social media, and on the web. Volunteers will be able to perform the action from there. If volunteers are not logged into the app, the app will require them to log in before performing the action.
You can also share any action with a user or user list through the Users tab by selecting the user(s) and clicking on the "Send" drop down menu and selecting "Action".
Pro Tip: Admins can also generate these links for private actions. After sending to a user list, refresh the page to see the generated links. This enables you to share the action to an exclusive segment of volunteers using the link, despite the action not being publicly accessible for the rest of the campaign.
Performing Actions
After publishing, volunteers can now find the action on the app and start performing it. The action will be listed under "Explore Actions" in the homepage of the volunteer app. If you want to promote your action more prominently, click on the “Manage Action” drop-down menu and select "Mark Featured". This will pin the action to the top of the homepage.
Pro-Tip: If you want to see how your actions look live, but are not on the volunteer app, simply click on the link labeled "Go to Web" in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. This will take you to the Impactive web app where you can see and perform your action.
Viewing Action Results
After volunteers perform an action, you can continue tracking and managing your action in "View Results" through:
Metrics
User Engagement
Contact Reassignment
Metrics
A table with metrics will populate at the top of the “View Results” page. The "Overview" section includes Sent To, Seen, Started, Completed, Performs, and Reports. The "Messages Performance" section changes depending on the action performed. Visit Reporting: Glossary and Key Terms for Admin Metrics for a description of each metric.
User Engagement
Sometimes the volunteers assigned to your action need to be nudged or reminded to complete an action. In these instances, you can go to the “User Engagement” section of an action’s results to Send Push Notifications, Send Email, Send Message, or Send An Action again. Simply click on those respective buttons to send a reminder. We recommend using Filters to locate users that have not completed the action.
You can also view percentage calculations to gauge activity metrics at a glance. You can see the percentage of responses, opt outs, and errors generated during the texting actions. We also have ‘Frequency’ columns in the Tags & Custom Fields and Response Scripts’ tables on the ‘View Results’ pages so you can see how often a tag was applied, or how often a response script was sent to their contacts.
Contact Reassignment
This feature is helpful in the event that your volunteer has not followed up with others and they have outstanding "Needs attention" messages.
In the “User Engagement” section, click on an individual user’s name or email.
Check the box next to the listed action and click the “Re-Assign Contacts” button.
Select a new user to reassign the contacts to.
Click the “Assign contacts” button.
Next recommended help page: Best Practices for Impactive Action Types