Last week we wrote an article, Segmenting for Success, in which we talked about the various ways you can segment your stakeholders for success. Whether specifically directed towards advocacy or just an awareness / community building effort, segmenting your list and sending them “personalized” messaging has shown time and again to drive the largest engagement rates. Whatever your goal, segmenting your lists can bring you success in your effort.
To that end, today we’ll look at how you can quickly and easy segment your stakeholders within Engage. Follow the steps below to get up and running quickly.
- Advocate Search Groups
First step to segmenting your list is deciding the groups into which you’ll be placing your advocates. Again, Segmenting for Success goes into different ways groups can break down their list. For today’s discussion, we’ll go with a few traditional searches – by district, by business division and by activity. Of course, as you add custom questions and gather additional data, you may want to think about by issue interest, job title and other data points that you’ve collected / identified.On to creating advocate groups or segments. The first step is easy, on the Advocates screen under People, you’ll notice a left hand / right hand column relationship in the main work area. On the left side, you’ll see a link to “Create Group.”
Clicking on “Create Group” we now see a simple popover that asks us to name a group, type in “by District” and click Submit.
You should now see the by District group in the left rail. Click on “Create Group” as many times as you like. Remember, you can segment your lists in as many different ways as you like. In fact, we encourage it. Think about adding by Activity, by Division, by Age Group and others that might help you get to the bottom of your data.
Click on the newly created by District group and you’ll see the right hand search listing area blank. Next step, click “Create Search.”
- The Create Search Screen – Getting Down to Segmenting
In the previous step we created a few search groupings, in this step we’ll begin to populate them with various searches we can re-use moving forward.
- Name Your Search:
First step will be to give your search a name, in this case, let’s say that my organization has a member with a large office in Michigan’s 4th District, I’ll name this search MI-04. - Specify Your Criteria:
Engage makes it very easy to specify criteria for your search. In this case, we’re going to click on Advocate Location, then District. You’ll notice when you do this, a search criteria box shows up in your working area on the left. From the dropdown presented, select MI-04 and click Add Query. You’ll see MI-04 show up in the right side of the working space, indicating it’s been added. - Save Your Search:
Now that you’ve specified your search criteria, simply click the Save Search button. This will take you to a results screen like the one seen below where you can then act on your results.
Note: Before saving your search, you can preview the results by clicking “View Search Results.” This will take what you’ve specified and run it against your database, showing you a preview of the results.
- Name Your Search:
- Search Results:
Now that you’ve created your search, it’s time to act on the results. Click on a stakeholder to view their profile, send an email or download the list and hand it to your communications team to call members and gather further information.
Remember, segmenting and re-segmenting your list should be a constant within your advocacy strategy. With every email (un)opened, every link clicked, every action taken you gather more information about your advocates. To get the most out of each stakeholder, you’ll need to speak in language and on terms they can understand and believe in. With the data you’re collecting you’ll be able to do so, and in doing so, you’ll see results from your efforts.
