Dynamic variables in phone banking scripts are a powerful way to personalize conversations. Think of dynamic variables like a mail merge: you insert a placeholder variable into a script that will be replaced with the contact's real information when the user views the phone banking script for that contact. For example, a script that says "Hey {{first_name}}!" will be populated with "Hey John!" when a user speaks to John.
Using Impactive's Built-In Dynamic Variables
Impactive offers a number of built-in dynamic variables that are insertable via the buttons located at the top of the script editor:
Simply click on any of these buttons (Contact Info, User Info, or Campaign Info) to insert any of the dynamic variables listed in that category.
List of Built-In Dynamic Variables Available
Contact Info
First Name: The contact's first name.
Last Name: The contact's last name.
Email: The contact's email address, if available. (Note that contacts will only have email addresses in Impactive if that data was imported with the contact list, or if the contact entered their email address in a form or voter registration action.)
Phone: The contact's phone number.
State: The contact's state, if available. (Note that contacts will only have state in Impactive if that data was imported with the contact list, or if the contact entered their full address or ZIP code in a form or voter registration action.)
User Info
First Name: The user's first name.
Last Name: The user's last name.
Full Name: The user's first and last name, with a space in between.
Email: The user's email address, if available. (Note that not all users have entered email addresses, so there's a slight risk of blanks when using this variable.)
Phone: The user's phone number.
Campaign Info
Campaign Name: The name of your campaign (visible at the top-left corner of your admin dashboard)
Description: The description for your campaign, set in Campaign Settings > Basics.
Join Code: The join code that users can input in Impactive to join your campaign, visible in Campaign Settings.
Using Custom Dynamic Variables
You can populate your scripts with custom dynamic variables simply by setting up a custom field to store your desired data, then using that custom field as a dynamic variable in your script.
Create the custom field under Data > Custom Fields.
Take note of the Slug for that new Custom Field, displayed in the table under Data > Custom Fields.
Use that exact slug as the column header in a CSV and fill in data accordingly for each contact (still including the required column headers for first_name, last_name, and phone as described here).
Import the CSV with the custom field data.
In a particular phone banking script, paste in the custom field slug surrounded by two brackets on either side; for example: {{custom_field_favorite_color}}
Be careful not to edit the slug of the dynamic variable (for either built-in or custom dynamic variables). Dynamic variables must always be surrounded by two curly brackets on either side - like {{first_name}} - and you should should never edit the name (within brackets) of the slug itself. Improperly-formatted dynamic variables will not work.
Ideas for Dynamic Variables
Dynamic variables offer very powerful personalization capabilities for scripts - and personalized scripts are known to perform much better than generic, impersonal scripts. Almost anything about a script can be customized with dynamic variables, even entire sentences!
Here are a few creative ways to use dynamic variables for higher-performing scripts:
Personalize the greeting with the contact's name. We strongly recommend writing scripts that start with a greeting like "Hey, {{first_name}}!"
Personalize the message with the contact's locale. Use a built-in dynamic variable for state of residence, or import custom field data for a more specific locale like neighborhood or precinct.
Personalize entire sections of the script depending on a contact's interests. It will take some spreadsheet manipulation, but you could create customized sentences of the script that depend on what you know about contacts' interests. For example, if you have data on contacts' top-priority issue, you could create a spreadsheet column that lists a customized sentence of the script according to that issue - like "I know you care most about climate change in our state; our platform includes a number of provisions to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030." You can then import those sentences as a custom variable and insert them into your script for fully-personalized scripts per-contact.