Petition and Letter Pages¶

Title, Name, Notes¶

Enter the title the user will see at the top of the web page.

Edit the short name if you don't want to use what is auto-generated from the title. This forms part of the URL for this page. Only use letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes. No spaces or other characters.

For example, the URL for a signup page is http://docs.actionkit.com/signup/your_short_name/.

Use the Notes field to associate information with a page for internal use. Notes are displayed on the Pages Tab and Browse All screen.

Tags¶

You can associate one or more tags with your page by selecting them from the drop down.

Tags are categories that you can associate with a Page or Mailing. They may represent issue areas or campaigns (e.g. food_safety or Paris_climate_talks_campaign).

You can use Tags to group Pages or Mailings. Tags are displayed on the Dashboard and the Browse all listing, and you can filter by Tag, so for example, you can quickly view the list of all the Tages you have created for a particular campaign.

Tags can also be used to group users for mailing targeting and analysis. Users who take action on a Page are associated with that Page's Tag(s).

Every user who takes action on the Page is associated with the Page's current Tags. There is no way to associate only some of those who took action on a Page with a Tag (for example, you can't tag only donors giving over $X on a page).

Read more about managing Tags including how to add Tags and reorder your Tag list.

Targets¶

The U.S. House and Senate are automatically available as targets for Petition, Letter, Call or Whipcount page. Each state's house and senate are also available, but have to be activated following the steps for Adding a new target group below before they will display in the Target Groups box. You can create a group from a subset of any legislative body (e.g. a particular committee) by following the same steps.

You can also create and select custom target groups. Custom targets can be anyone: Governors, school board members, CEOs, whoever you want. A custom target group can consist of one target or many.

Custom target groups can have the following jurisdictions:

• City and state
• City and country
• County and state
• State
• Country

By default, All users is selected, which means all actions on the Page are directed to all targets in the group.

Groups with a jurisdiction work like legislative targets where the target only receives actions from their constituents. Specifically:

• You can use snippets to show your users information about their target.
• Only users who we know live in the states or countries specified can take action on a Call Page (you can provide a fallback URL for others). Recognized users see the correct target automatically.
• Signature deliveries only include constituents.
• You can use the target constituents checkbox as a shortcut to limit a Mailing to users in the states or countries specified.

For state and federal legislative targets, and custom targets with jurisdictions, certain address information is required to match each user to the right target.

For Petition and Letter Pages you don't have to select any target, but of course you can't deliver signatures without a target. Some signatures may be undeliverable if you add targets to the page later and you weren't requiring the relevant information. When a user isn't in the jurisdiction of any of the page's targets (whether because the page has no targets or because the user lives in a different area) the page will not show an error to the user, but the signature will not be delivered.

For immediate delivery, only signatures submitted after the target is added to the page will be delivered. You can add targets later and deliver older signatures using batch delivery or e-delivery through the Mail tool.

Not all delivery methods are available for all targets. Read more about signature deliveries.

One-click Signing¶

In the Options section, click if you'd like to Enable One-Click Signing. This turns on a shortcut for recognized users, who sign the petition simply by clicking the link in a mailing, without entering any information. These users are directed automatically to the thank you screen and their action is recorded in the core_action table.

One-click signing makes it easier for a user to take action, increasing action rates. But it's important to make it clear to users that they sign by clicking the link in the email.

Users who aren't recognized will see the standard petition page with the content you entered and a blank user form.

And the one-click link only works once - subsequent clicks on the link take the user to the petition page to submit an action, just as they would for pages without one-click enabled.

Goal¶

Thermometers can increase action rates, so we've made it easy to add one to your page.

To include a thermometer on your page, enter a numeric goal in the goal section and select the type of actions to count. The options are:

• Actions -- total actions
• Actions -- unique users
• Dollars raised

Thermometer appearance is set by the progress_meter Template. A designer or developer can customize the appearance by editing the Template and set the goal to automatically increase if it's reached.

List¶

A mailing list is just a group of your users who can be emailed (e.g. they haven't bounced or unsubscribed). Users join a list by taking action on a page (or you can add them through the Uploader). Users who take action on this page are added to the list selected if they're not already on it.

You may have multiple Lists, but you can only choose one for this page, unless you customize your Templateset to add users to more than one list.

Your page should clearly indicate that signers will be subscribed to your mailing list. This is essential to maintaining good deliverability.

You can also edit your Templateset to require users to opt-in to the mailing list instead.

Read more about creating and using mailing Lists.

Language¶

This option is only relevant if you've set up Languages aside from English in your instance. If so, the additional Languages will show here in the drop down under More Options.

Select a Language to:

• Save this as the user's language for any user who takes action on this page.
• Use the translated system messages (e.g. "Email is required"), if you added these when you set up the Language.
• Tell ActionKit to pre-select the default Templateset for the Language on the Edit content screen and to pre-select the default Email Wrapper for the Language for your Confirmation Email -- if you've set defaults for these.

If you don't want the user's language to change because they took action on this page, you can select '---------' from the Language list.

To learn more about ActionKit's Language functionality, including how to add Languages and translate error messages see Languages and Multilingual Campaigns.

Multilingual Campaign¶

Multilingual Campaigns allow you to associate multiple Pages with each other for tracking and reporting. If you've selected a Goal, the thermometer for Pages that share the same Multilingual Campaign shows the combined results.

Also, your end users will see links at the top right of the page so they can toggle to their preferred Language.

You can add a Multilingual Campaign from the Pages Tab or from the Multilingual Options section on the Action basics screen when you're creating a page.

Create a Multilingual Campaign for each Page that you plan to translate. Then select the Campaign and the Language when you create each translation.

On the Pages Tab, if you click the grey Multilingual Campaigns link, you'll see summary information for each Campaign including the count of action takers and a list of the Pages showing each Language.

Read more about Languages and Multilingual Campaigns.

Recognize Users¶

Recognize user allows you to control what happens when someone who is already in your database arrives on this page with an identifier (AKID), like from a link in one of your mailings.

The default option once, will recognize a user if we have the fields and can simply submit. This is a default because most of the time the first user who follows a link and submits on the page is the user associated with the AKID. Other users who follow the same link are generally friends who have received a message from the original user telling them about the action, so you don't want the page to recognize them -- both because the page would think the friends are still the original user and because you want to capture correct contact information for the friends.

Never requires all users (recognized or not) to enter all required information. You might use Never if you want to do something like make sure that everyone taking action on a page enters a phone number, whether or not you already have one in the database.

Always has fewer obvious uses, but we've included it in case there are times when you want everyone who follows a link to be counted as the user identified in the link. Be careful with this setting -- with Always selected, the first action (which again is usually made by the person associated with the AKID) and any actions taken by friends who were forwarded the link, are attributed to the user who received the mailing. You don't collect email or any other information from these friends. And the original user gets a thank you email (if you have this set up) for every action submitted by their friends.

Allow Multiple Responses¶

Capture every user submission as a new action or overwrite earlier actions by a user with the newer actions from that user on this page.

Check multiple responses if you want to capture each entry a user makes. We'll add a row to core_action each time a user submits on a page and capture all the corresponding information like custom action fields.

If the box isn't checked, and a user submits more than once on a page, the latest entry will overwrite the previous one. Note that the action source will always reflect the original source of the first action taken by a user.

The box is unchecked by default for Petition or Letter pages, where you generally only want one signature and one comment per user.

Spam Checks¶

Only relevant if you've enabled spam checking. Use this to tell ActionKit not to apply the checks to this page.

Is Model¶

You can mark a page as a Model, as you can a mailing, and use it as the basis for future Pages of the same type.

Models can be used to save standard text you include in the Confirmation Email or the tell-a-friend message for Petition Pages, or to save your most commonly used Donation page settings, or as a shortcut for creating C3 versus C4 Donation Pages with the appropriate page wrapper, merchant vendor account, Email Wrapper and From Line.

When you copy a Model, all the settings remain the same, except the copy is not marked as a Model.

Designate your Model by checking the Is model box on the Action basics screen under More options.

Click on the light gray Models link at the top of the page list on your Pages tab to see a list. Or use the filter options on the Browse all screen.

Model pages do not work differently than other pages. Users can still submit on a Model page, if you make the URL public.

Note

Only users with the Pages - plus Model Pages permission and superusers can create and edit model pages. The checkbox to designate a page as a model will not show up for other users.

Page Fields¶

Custom page fields are a powerful and flexible tool that allows you to add a section of content or code to an individual page.

For example, if you want to ask users to tweet about an action they've taken, you could add a page field called "twitter" and include a suggested message specific to the page. If you have a Protect Parrots petition your sample message might be "Parrots are smart. I just signed to save them here: action_URL"

Page fields you've created are available on the Action basics screen for each page.

Use this syntax to include page fields in your templatesets or to reference them when creating a page: {{ page.custom_fields.YOUR_FIELD_NAME_HERE }}. Or, if your custom page field contains template tags or filters that need to be interpreted, then use this syntax instead: {% include_tmpl page.custom_fields.YOUR_FIELD_NAME_HERE %}.

Templateset¶

Customize the look and feel of your Pages using Templates. Our templating system separates the graphic design work of creating pages with your organization's style from the campaign work of setting goals, crafting your message, and creating content.

Templates define everything about the appearance of your pages from your page layout and colors, to the fields displayed in your user forms and the image for your thermometers. Each Page you create in ActionKit combines input from multiple Templates.

A Templateset is just a group of all the available Templates; each ActionKit Page combines input from multiple Templates.

To set a Page's appearance you just select the appropriate Templateset from the dropdown on the Edit Content screen.

Petition pages use the petition template, which includes the comment box for users. Letters use the letter template. Both also use the Shared templates.

Host Outside ActionKit¶

You can host your page with ActionKit or on your own server. Either way you can access all the same functionality - your end users will be recognized, error messages returned, data submitted to the database, Confirmation Emails sent, etc.

To host a page yourself, you need to copy some code into the HTML on your server. Select the Host outside ActionKit box on the Edit content screen when you create your page. Then view the source and download the code from the Preview/Get HTML screen.

When you check the box, we prefill some generic content in the text boxes. If you want the correct content to be included in the code you download, just overwrite the filler. Otherwise, skip the text boxes and enter your text in your own CMS.

We also display a URL field. Enter the URL for your page and we'll hook it up to the View link on the Pages Tab.

Read more tips and suggestions in the embedding section.

Content¶

The content for your pages is entered here. The text boxes for all page types share the same basic functionality.

{{ user.first_name|default:"Friend" }}

User Form Fields¶

The Templateset chosen above determines what fields are in your user form, but you can override that for this page by checking Customize Fields. You can’t remove fields needed to process the action (e.g. a petition targeting your state senate requires the address field as we need it to identify the correct target). Read more in the required form fields section.

Otherwise, you can select the fields to be displayed and required, and their order. You can include, and require, any standard user field as well as custom user and action fields, if your templateset supports this.

If you see a red message informing you that some customization choices are not available, your developer or designer must update your Templateset to enable all options. The relevant changes are described here.

In any case, your user form field customization choices do not change how ActionKit processes actions.

Customize Fields¶

Check Customize Fields to see your default fields and customization options. Uncheck it to remove any changes you’ve made and revert to the default. Below we describe the full range of options available with a modern user form Template.

For the fields shown and any you add, you can set the field to be Always Required, Required, Visible, Visible If Blank, Visible Always, or If Needed:

• Always Required: The user cannot submit on this page without filling in this field. Even if the user is recognized (e.g. came to the page from a link in a mailing with their AKID), and the user has a value for the required field, the user will still need to fill out this field. Available as an option for every field except Name, Email, and Custom HTML Fields. (Email is always "Required.")
• Required: The user cannot submit on this page without filling in this field. However, if the user is recognized (e.g. came to the page from a link in a mailing with their AKID), and the user has a saved value for the required field, this field will be hidden for the user. If the user is recognized and there is no saved value for this field, user recognition will be prevented, and the entire form will show as if there was no AKID in the URL string. Available as an option for every field except for Custom Action Fields and Custom HTML Fields.
• Visible: If the user is recognized, the field will be hidden. If the uesr is not recognized, the field will show on the user form, but a user can submit without entering a value. Available as an option for every field except Email.
• Visible if Blank: If the user is recognized, the field will only show on the page if there is no value saved for it. If the user is not recognized, the field will be visible, and a user can submit without entering a value. Available as an option for every field except Email, Custom Action Fields, and Custom HTML Fields.
• Always Visible: If the user is recognized, the field will show on the page regardless of whether there is a value saved for it. If the user is not recognized, the field will still be visible, and a user can submit without entering a value. Available as an option for every field except Email and Name.
• If Needed: This setting is pre-selected for address fields for Petition, Letter, and Call Pages to let you know that we’ll include these fields if required given the advocacy target you select. If the field is needed for action processing by ActionKit, it will be required even if you delete the field or change the setting. Available as an option for every field except Phone, Custom User Fields, Custom Action Fields, and Custom HTML Fields.

A few fields have additional options.

• Name fields can be combined or separate. The Full Name field adds one form field titled Name to your form. You can set this to required or to First & Last Required. If you choose the latter, the user will get an error message if they only enter one name in the name field. With the former, ActionKit will accept a one word entry and save it to the first name field.

  Select Separate Name Fields to convert the single Name to two fields titled First name and Last name. You can then set either or both to required.

• The State/Region and Zip/Postal fields each combine two related fields, one for use in the United States and the other for international addresses. Templatesets typically use JavaScript to hide or show one of each pair, depending on which country the user has selected.

  You can set these items to Required in US to mark the state or zip fields as required while leaving their international equivalents optional, or set them to Required if they should also be required for international addresses.

• Select Separate Phone Fields to choose between a Phone field or separate Home Phone, Mobile Phone, and Work Phone fields.

You can use the sort handles to drag-and-drop fields into a different order, and you can click to delete fields you don’t need.

You can also add additional fields.

When using Always Required for a field that the user already has on file, only the JavaScript on action pages checks that a new value was provided with this action submit. In the future, we might check for that server-side as well.

Redirect URL¶

In the Required section, you'll see the URL for the thank you page with the text you entered in the previous step. If you'd like to direct the user to a different page, enter the URL here.

The URL is always pre-filled, but you can change it if you'd like to direct users to another page instead. Just enter the URL. For example, you might want to have your users land on a Donation page after they sign a Petition.

If you change the redirect, be sure to submit from your page to confirm that you entered the URL correctly.

Advanced option: Use a hidden input with the name redirect and value of a URL will change the after-action page to the URL you entered.

See also How do I pass a source code through to a redirect?

Confirmation Email¶

The Confirmation Email usually thanks the user for their action.

You can use Snippets to insert conditional content. To include a Snippet in the subject, cut and paste the Snippet from those available for the body.

There's a Snippet that allows you to include the user's response to any survey questions (aka action fields). The syntax is action.custom_fields.QUESTION_NAME. You can only do this for survey questions that are on the page associated with the Confirmation Email.

Your Confirmation Email must include an unsubscribe link. Not many users unsubscribe as a result of the thank you email, but offering that option contributes to your standing with the various ISPs.

To create your Confirmation Email you need to:

1 Select the Email wrapper from the dropdown list. Wrappers define the header and footer of your email. See creating email wrappers.

2 Select the Email From Line entry from the dropdown list, add a new From Line, or fill in a From Line for use in this mailing only by clicking "use a custom From Line". See From Line.

3 Enter your Email subject.

4 Enter your Email body.

Tell-a-friend¶

If you enable the tell-a-friend widget for a page, your user is shown a box where they can fill in friends' email addresses. They can also click a link to mail friends directly through their preferred email program.

The tell-a-friend options show on the thank you screen (and also on the action page for petitions). You can modify your Templateset to create a standalone TAF page.

If the user enters addresses through the widget, the friend will receive a message with the user's email in the from line while the email is technically sent from your ActionKit domain (to improve delivery speed and reliability).

The user cannot edit the subject or the body of the message but they can add a short personal note. Snippets are available for these messages as well.

Alternatively, a user can follow the link to mail friends through their email program. This option opens the user's default email program and prefills the body and subject (in the email programs that support this). The user will be able to edit the subject and body of the email in this case and the email will come directly from the user.

We don't have an address sucker option, as we've found repeatedly in testing that this option depresses the action rate.

You can see a count of how many tell-a-friend emails any user sends through the widget in the taf_emails_sent column in the core_action table. If the friend follows the link in the TAF message and takes action, the source of the action will be taf. Tell-a-friend emails sent through the user's own email program aren't included in the count.

To create your tell-a-friend message you must:

1 Check the Enable Tell-a-friend widget checkbox.

2 Enter the Tell-a-friend subject. This subject cannot be edited by users, unless they choose to email friends through their own email client.

3 Enter the Tell-a-friend body. Don't forget to enter the full URL for your page in the body. (Use the "Full page URL" Snippet in the Snippet page section to insert this: {{ page.canonical_url }})".

The TAF widget works slightly differently for petition pages. If you include a TAF message, it's displayed on the screen with the petition text and again on the thanks page if the user doesn't tell anyone on the first screen. We've seen that including the TAF ask on the petition page itself increases the number of TAF messages sent, without decreasing the number of petition signers. This may not be true for every list and you can change it by editing the petition template in the templateset for this page.

Sharing¶

To view or customize Sharing for your page, toggle open the Sharing section to display previews of how your page will appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Text below the previews will indicate whether the page's current Templateset supports customization of the share messages, and whether it supports tracking of share links.

If customization is enabled, you can click on the sharing previews to edit the text and image.

Any images that appear in your page are shown as candidates for the Facebook image, making it easy to pick one of them to be featured.

The standard thanks template includes social sharing buttons that encourage users to tell their friends about the action they've just taken.

These Post to Facebook and Share on Twitter buttons send users to the social networks' built-in sharing functions, passing along information about your page.

If your Templateset includes certain required code tags, you can customize the sharing messages associated with your page and view reports of sharing-related traffic.

If you see a message that your Templateset doesn't support all of the Sharing functionality, your designer or developer can update your templates.

Facebook Share Customization¶

You can view and customize the way a page will be displayed in Facebook shares using the Sharing controls on the After-action info screen.

If your Templateset supports customization of Facebook sharing, you'll be able to click on the title, description or image to edit it.

Twitter Share Customization¶

You can view and customize the suggested tweet text for the "Share on Twitter" button using the Sharing controls on the After-action info screen.

If your Templateset supports customization of Twitter sharing, you'll be able to click on the text to edit it.

The text you enter will automatically have a tracking link appended to the end, unless the text contains a HTTP or HTTPS link. If you would like to control the link placement, for example to add hashtags after the tracking link, insert the marker {LINK} at the appropriate place in your tweet text.

Share Tracking Links¶

Share tracking links are generated when a user clicks a link that looks like this: http://docs.actionkit.com/share/link?type=fb&page={{page.name}}&...

The type parameter can be fb for Facebook, tw for Twitter, or ot for other types of sharing, such as user-copied share links.

Each time you generate one of these tracking links, a row is stored in share_link with the creating user's user_id, the page_id, and the action_id you had just taken.

Share tracking works by including a special "s" AKID in the links passed to Facebook and Twitter. Share links look like this: http://docs.actionkit.com/signup/signup?akid=s31..ecM5JC

When you click on a link with these special AKIDs you're not "recognized" as any particular user, but your clicks and actions are associated with the share link.

By default, clicks/actions on one of these share tracking links are given a "source" value of "share", but you can override this by updating your template to include a custom source= parameter in the /share/link address used by the share buttons. You will not see the source parameter in the URL that is shared, but the source will be added in the database when someone takes action from the share link.

You can add other parameters to the initial request to have them included in the tracking link. For example, if you added a foo=bar parameter to the /share/link/ request, it would be included in the link that was shared.

You can generate short links by including a short=1 parameter in the /share/link address used by the share buttons. Short share links look like this: http://docs.actionkit.com/s/31.ecM5JC

Sharing Reports¶

There are two standard dashboard reports that present queries of sharing-related traffic.

The Share Stats for Date Range report summarizes sharing traffic across all Pages on your site within a given date range. It includes overall totals as well as breakdowns by page, by sharing network, by date, the top twenty users, and by sharing generation.

The Share Stats for Page report summarizes sharing traffic for a particular page on your site. It includes overall totals as well as breakdowns by sharing network, by date, the top twenty users, and by sharing generation.

Each of these queries includes columns for how many users shared, how many share links were created, how many of those were clicked, how many were acted on, and the total number of resulting actions and new users.

The breakdowns by type show the shares and resulting traffic for Facebook, Twitter, and user-copied share links.

The by page query shows the most active Pages receiving traffic from user share links.

The by user query highlights the most active sharing users, sorted by the number of actions their share links have generated.

The by generation query reveals what proportion of the shares are from users you're driving to the page versus those coming from downstream shares and "shares-of-shares" viral traffic. It distinguishes between shares by users who arrived from a mailing or other web link (1st generation), versus users who clicked on a share link on Facebook/Twitter and then shared again (2nd generation), and so forth.

Notification Emails¶

Notifications are emails to someone aside from the action taker, prompted by actions on the Page.

You can use these for a variety of purposes including:

• sending an email to the honoree about gifts made in their honor,
• alerting field organizers to each new event created in an event campaign,
• notifying a campaign director every 1,000 new actions on a page,
• emailing your development staff for each new recurring commitment.

Create your notifications and then select the ones you want to associate with each page on the After action info screen. Each action can prompt multiple notification emails.

Notification emails will only send if there are values for the subject line, to emails, from email, and mailing body. So you can use conditional content to control whether the notification requirements have been met.

We provide a few sample notifications that you can use or customize:

• In honor of: This example shows how you'd prompt a notification email to the honoree after each gift in his/her honor. First you need to add an action field with the label 'action_in_honor_of_email' to the Donation Page template you'll be using. Then you can use the to line in the example -- {{ action.custom_fields.in_honor_of_email }}. The example also shows some conditional content you might include in the notification email by adding additional custom action fields to your template.
• Tell staff about monthly donation: In this example, the subject includes the criteria to prompt the sending of the email. Whichever staff you select from the list or enter in the "to" line will receive this notification after each new monthly donation is created. The body includes some conditional content.
• Notify every 1000: In this example, the send criteria is in the body and the subject includes conditional content.

Here are some other examples that aren't included in your instance but that you might add:

• Notify someone when a donation is greater than $250:

Subject: {% if action.order.total > 249 %}New $250+ Donation!{% endif %}

* Notify event hosts of new attendees:

To: {% for host in action.event.hosts %}{{ host.email }}{% if not forloop.last %},{% endif %}{% endfor %}

Subject: Subject {{ user.first_name }} has RSVPed for your event

Read about adding notifications.