Article Description: In this article, we will walk through how to create and manage tags via the Admin Dashboard to track the results of your programming.
This article will review:
Tags
What are tags in Impactive, and why are they important?
Tags are the way Impactive allows you to track the results of your program using a simple, yes, no opt-in. Common examples of tags include Wrong Number, Spanish Speaker, and Volunteer Prospect. If you are familiar with VAN’s infrastructure, it may be helpful to think of tags as Impactive’s version of activist codes.
We recommend organizations also create custom tags so that when their volunteers are completing actions, either in the app or on the web platform, you can send that data back to your campaign to inform your strategy further. Tags show up after a volunteer clicks on “Fill Report”, which they can do during friend-to-friend or peer-to-peer actions.
How to create Tags:
To create a tag, navigate to the DATA tab on your Impactive admin dashboard, then select the Tags page.
Select + Create Tag from there, add a name for the tag, choose the display order, and customize the report settings to your liking (we will break down each option below), and finally when possible always choose a folder to put it in so that you're able to have the best form of data management.
When finished select Create.
Create sync instructions for every tag and custom field to ensure your data syncs back to your integration. To learn more, check out our support article Syncing P2P and F2F Custom Fields to VAN.
Tags Report Breakdown
Display Order - You can enter a number here to determine what order on a volunteer’s report screen the tag appears. For example, if you enter 2, it will show up as the second option.
Default Report -If you want the custom field option to populate by default on an Impactive action, then you will want to check this box. If the Default Report box is checked, and you do not select any custom fields when creating a new action, the custom field will still appear on the report.
For Users - This tag can only be used in reports on Impactive users (volunteers), not contacts. In other words, it will not show up on a report that involves contacting people outside of the campaign on Impactive. We advise only checking this box if the tag is exclusively for internal organizing purposes.
Filterable - This is an option for your volunteers. With this setting turned on, after your users have synced their personal contacts with the Impactive app, they will be able to filter their contacts to see who has this tag.
Best Practices for Tags
Tags should be:
Single word or a phrase (not full sentences)
Concise
Able to map directly to a field or element in your VAN/PDI (usually activist codes), or other voter management database
We recommend only 5-8 tags active per action. Any more than that, and your volunteers may be overwhelmed and not fill any tags out.
Your volunteers and team should understand what the tags mean upon first glance. This will allow them to tag their friends easily and often while using Impactive.
Use Cases:
How are tags frequently used by other campaigns and organizations?
Better Understand Your Network
Tags are frequently used to help you better understand your network, the identities they hold, their affiliations, and can help ensure you are reaching a representative population of folks.
These include:
Person of Faith
Identifies as LGBTQ+
Person with a Disability
Domestic Care Worker
Union Member
Issue Affiliation or Support
Many organizations include tags relating to issue support/interest. If you are working in issue advocacy or community organizing, similar tags may be relevant to your campaigns.
These include:
Paid Family Leave
Keep Families Together
Safety Net
Your Issue-Based Campaign theme here
Candidate Support, Voting and GOTV
For electoral campaigns utilizing Impactive, we recommend including tags relating to voting plans and voter registration.
These could include:
Checked registration: not registered to vote
Checked registration: registered to vote!
Mail in ballot voter
Committed to early vote
Election Day Voter
Volunteer Identification and Recruitment
Some organizations use Impactive tags to identify prospective volunteers.
These tags could include:
Volunteer Prospect
Phone Bank Volunteer
Text Bank Volunteer
Canvass Volunteer
Setting Tags and Custom Fields for Actions
In order to gather the best data possible for your campaign, union or organization, we recommend setting up tags and custom fields on a per-action basis. This will allow your volunteers to have conversations with friends and contacts, and then easily report back relevant information to your campaign through the Fill a Report button in their Impactive inbox.
Once you have created all of your preferred tags and custom fields within the DATA tab, you can create a new action and select which tags and custom fields will show up on the report for anyone reached via that action.
Reminder: If you do not select any tags or custom fields when creating your action, then those checked “default” within the DATA tab will automatically show up within your volunteers reports.
Pro-Tips:
Choose a few tags and custom fields per action and customize them to match the script your volunteers will be using. This is best practice to ensure volunteers are prioritizing filling out reports with the information that is key to the campaign.
Make sure you ask and remind your volunteers to fill out a report for every conversation so that you get the complete picture of how each conversation went.
Instruct your volunteers to submit reports frequently. Assure them that there is no need to wait until a conversation is “over.” As soon as they learn something new about the contact, they should fill out and submit a report so that the campaign has the context of the conversation too.
Auto-Tagging Responses
If you'd like a contact to be automatically tagged with an activist code or result code, you can set up an auto tag such that any contact who receives a specific script will automatically be tagged. Impactive has auto-tagging functionality built into response scripts so that your volunteers don't have to manually file a report after every response message they send. Note that this feature is only available within Peer to Peer Texting actions.
Here's how to set up Auto-Tagging Responses:
Click on “Add another response script”.
Enter a Name for the response, and a Script Message. For example, for an affirmative response to an initial text recruiting for an event, you might write: "Attending: Yes" as the Script Name and "Great - so glad you can attend! The event starts at at 7:30pm on Saturday" as the Script Message.
To include a tag or custom field that will automatically be applied when your volunteer sends this response, click the “Advanced Options” drop-down menu.
Check either “Tag the contact” and/or “Update custom field of the contact” depending on which you'd like to use.
Within the box that appears, select the appropriate tag(s) and/or custom field(s) you'd like to be automatically applied.
Once you've applied these settings to your action, your contacts will automatically have a tag or custom field value applied to them each time the corresponding response is sent. If the VAN Integration is set up, that data will be sent to VAN. This will save you and your volunteers a ton of time - no need to fill out manual reports!
Frequently Asked Questions: Tags and Custom Fields
What is the difference between Tags and Custom Fields?
Tags and Custom Fields are the way Impactive allows you to track the results of your program. Tags use a simple yes-or-no response to a question and are marked by toggling the corresponding button on/off within Impactive reports. Whereas, custom fields are answers to multiple choice questions (strong supporter, supporter, undecided, leans against, strong against).
How do you ensure your tags and custom fields are synced to your voter database (ie VAN or PDI)?
For instructions on how to sync tags to your voter database, please check out our Help Center article on Setting up Sync Instructions for VAN. The instructions are similar for other voter databases.
It’s vital that you either set up this integration, or make a plan as a team to regularly export the tags and reports from Impactive. You can learn more about how to find these metrics in our Help Center article, Reporting: Glossary and Key Terms for Admin Metrics.
How do you edit, deactivate or update your tags?
Navigate to the Tags page within the DATA tab. Click on the three dot ellipses at the right of each tag to edit, deactivate, or delete the tag. We recommend that if you do not want the tag to be visible anymore, but you’d like the data to remain, that you deactivate the tag.
How do you edit, deactivate or update your custom fields?
Navigate to the Custom Fields page within the DATA tab. Click on the three dot ellipses at the right of each custom field to edit, deactivate, or delete the custom field. We recommend that if you do not want the custom field to be visible anymore, but you’d like the data to remain, that you deactivate the custom field.
How do you update the listed visual order of your tags?
You can write in an integer number (ie 1,2,3…) into the Display Order field when you are creating or editing a tag. The tag will show up visually in that display order.
