NationBuilder FAQs

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You have a few options to warm-up a share list in your nation: 

• Get the endorsing organization to send the blast for you: rather than just sharing a list, your ally can email blast their supporters with your signup page. You can collect the opt-ins and treat them as your own supporters. This lets your ally respect his supporters while giving you the best chance for actual engagement from the new list. 
• Scrub the list using Accurate Append and do an opt-in campaign: often times, shared lists are years old, which means you have to scrub the list to remove outdated emails. Not doing so can damage your email reputation. Afterwards, do an opt-in campaign to ask the list to signup on your site for updates. Do not repeatedly blast those who do not opt-in since this increases the liklihood of spam reports. 

Getting a shared list isn't a replacement for building your own. An organic list takes time to build and a shared list shouldn't be considered a short-cut. 

Official response from Joe Wisniewski

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It sounds like NationBuilder will help you import data! Because data will be created and/or merged into your nation, its important that the data is imported precisely. Therefore, we ask that you please provide NationBuilder with the following.

1) A spreadsheet of the people, finance or membership data (CSV format is preferred).

2) A key or explanation of your column mappings. Your column mappings are also known as the headers of your spreadsheet. This is necessary so that NationBuilder support can map your data into the nation. For more resources on what your headers align to see: 

http://nationbuilder.com/fields_available_for_import

If you will not require particular columns, please indicate that as well.

3) A unique identifier. A unique identifier (ID) is data that exists in only one profile within a nation. Think of it like a social security number: a particular value can only exist in that field in one record in your database. Unique IDs are used to merge information from imports with existing records in your nation. All imports must include a unique ID, see: 

http://nationbuilder.com/unique_identifier

4) Specify whether the import will be supporters or prospects, see:

http://nationbuilder.com/how_support_status_is_determined

Once we receive this information from you, NationBuilder can reply with an estimate for completion time. Please note that this service is complementary during your free trial, but it might quoted as a paid service depending on the complexity of your data. If you are outside of your trial period, please contact [email protected] to see if you are eligible for an import as a paid service.

For more information on importing see:

http://nationbuilder.com/how_to_import

http://nationbuilder.com/free_import_services

Official response from Abraham Huie

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I've sent you an email with resources, Charles.

Official response from Abraham Huie

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When you need to embed a widget, iframe or any type of code onto a page, it is easy enough to click into the "Template" tab of that page and paste the code directly above or below the liquid tag for the page's content (or the 'body' if it's an email blast). Instructions on doing that can be found here.

Doing this will place your widget directly above or directly below the text/photos that you've entered into the "Content" tab of that page.  But what if you want to display your widget inbetween two paragraphs of your content? Like this:

 Here's text!

-SPLIT-

Here's more text!

The solution is a bit more complicated, but totally possible! In short, we will need to capture the liquid "Content" object as a string using the liquid capture tag and split that string using the liquid split filter.  Then we will hide the default content liquid tag and instead enter a number of other content tags, divided by a keyword (which is defined by the 'split' filter).

1. Capture the "body" or "content" liquid object as a string. In my example, I call the string "body" and use this code to do it:

-SPLIT-

2. Create a new array of the different 'body parts', separated by a keyword.  In my example, this array is called "body_parts" and the keyword is "SPLIT". Here's the code that I used:
-SPLIT-

Then, in the content section of your page (or the body section of your email), type your text like normal but place the keyword in places where you would like your other content to show up. Example:

3. Replace the normal "Body" or "Content" liquid objects with this:
-SPLIT-

Note: Because the split creates an array from the pieces, and arrays start at 0, the portion before your split keyword will be 0. In other words, body_parts[0] calls the first section of the body, body_parts[1] calls the second section of the body, and so on. The content that you would like to appear between your sections of text should be placed in between the different body_parts liquid objects, as shown above.

Official response from Brian Palmer

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To "duplicate" a list, you can simply make a second list of the same contacts. First, run a filter with the criteria "Lists," "is on all of the following Lists [your data entry list]."

Then you can add everyone from this filter to a list, by clicking on Actions in the upper right hand corner, selecting "Add all to list," naming that list in the "+ Create list" section, and pressing the yellow, "Create" button.

Now you have two lists of the same contacts - one for data entry, and one to save.

As an alternative to data entry view, your volunteers can use paths. In single-person view, your volunteers can move a person from one path step to the next to signify that they have completed logging a contact. Using paths to simplify this workflow circumvents the necessity of creating a list for the purpose of of data entry altogether. 

Official response from Lauren Rowse

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Hi Eric,

You can use the filter criteria "Interacted with Facebook page" or "Has liked Facebook post" to identify people who have engaged with the Facebook page affiliated with your broadcaster.

To create a recipient list for your email including only contacts who have not been engaged with your Facebook page, you can toggle either of these criteria to their "has not" version - and then save the filter. You will then be able to send your email blast directly to your saved filter. 

Official response from Lauren Rowse

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Domain masking is the process of redirecting a domain to a site and hiding the actual domain name of a website from the URL field of a user's web browser in favor of another name. While there are no prohibitions to use this domain configuration method, it does have consequences on your NationBuilder site's functionality.

When using domain masking on a NationBuilder site you might notice that certain functionality on the custom domain site may not work as intended. Below are a list of known issues with domain masking:

• Mobile versions of themes may not render correctly
• Some forms may not submit
• Website analytics might be skewed or non-existent
• Favicons may not render
• Sign-in pages and donation pages may not be entirely SSL encrypted on the URL level

In lieu of these issues, NationBuilder does offer several reliable domain configuration methods. We have a step-by-step guide to configure your domain with NationBuilder.

Official response from Abraham Huie

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The standard Google Analytics reports will begin showing data within 24 hours of when you input the account number into NationBuilder. If you're having issues viewing the standard reports on Google Analytics please try the following:

• Verify that your Analytics code is correct under Control Panel > Website > Site settings > Analytics setup > Google Analytics Code.

• You can retrieve your analytics code on Google. 

If you're having issues viewing specific custom goals or filters, you'll want to make sure that those are accurately mapped on Google Analytics. We have detailed instructions on correctly mapping goals and filters.

Official response from Abraham Huie