Communication is a two way street. Your supporters are going to engage with you and let you know what they care about. Analyze your email stats and social media engagement to learn what's most important to them.
Email stats
📌 Note: Open and click stats are only available for email sent from a broadcaster with tracking turned on. See Turn email tracking off for a broadcaster below.
You'll find email stats under Communication > [Broadcaster name] > Email. Locate the sent email blast and click its name. Stats appear in the Dashboard section of your email blast.
Click Opened to see everyone who opened the email. From there you can add them to a list of people who regularly engage with your nation, or who care about the subject of that email.
Visit People > Filters to find people who opened an email from a specific broadcaster in a certain number of days, or who opened a particular email blast.
Turn email tracking off for a broadcaster
Every broadcaster has a Track email opens and clicks setting. It's on by default. Some organizations turn it off, for example to follow privacy guidance in their country about tracking in email.
📌 Note: NationBuilder provides this setting, but it doesn't decide whether your organization is compliant with any law. Talk to your own legal counsel about what your organization needs.
How to turn it off
1. Go to Communication > [Broadcaster name] > Settings > Email.
2. Uncheck Track email opens and clicks and click Save.
3. A window explains that A/B testing and form autofill will turn off too. Click Turn off tracking to confirm.
The setting applies to email sent after you save. Blasts you've already sent keep their stats.
You need to be an admin, or a control panel user with permission to manage broadcasters, to change this setting.
What changes when tracking is off
For every email blast and automation email sent from that broadcaster:
Opens aren't tracked. The invisible image that records an open is no longer added to the email.
Clicks aren't tracked. Links no longer carry information that identifies the recipient, so NationBuilder doesn't record who clicked.
Stats show N/A. Opened and Clicked read N/A on the blast dashboard and in your broadcaster's sent email list. A note explains that tracking was off, with a link to Understand the results of your email blast.
A/B testing is unavailable. A blast that already has A/B variants can't be sent or scheduled until you remove the variants or turn tracking back on. Scheduled A/B blasts go back to draft. Your variants aren't deleted.
Form autofill is unavailable. The option to automatically add a recipient's email address to forms when they click a link is hidden, and forms won't be pre-filled from these emails.
Drafts and scheduled blasts follow the setting. Any draft or scheduled blast on the broadcaster will send without tracking.
Choosing a broadcaster. When you change which broadcaster sends an email, you'll only see broadcasters with the same tracking setting.
Merging broadcasters. You can only merge broadcasters that have the same tracking setting.
Fewer donations are linked to the email. A donation is only credited to an untracked blast if it's made during the same visit the person arrived on from that email. Donations made on a later visit are still recorded, but aren't credited to the blast.
What keeps working
Unsubscribe. The unsubscribe link still recognizes the recipient, so they can unsubscribe without typing their email address.
Bounces, bad addresses, spam reports and unsubscribes are still recorded and shown in your stats. One difference: an address marked bad from an untracked blast isn't reset if it starts working again.
Campaign tags. Links still include the campaign information your website analytics use to see traffic from each blast. These identify the blast, not the person.
Other email and texts. One-to-one email, autoresponses and text blasts aren't affected by this setting.
Before you turn it off
Engagement filters won't find these recipients. People who only receive untracked email will never show as having opened or clicked. Don't use "hasn't opened in 3 months" filters to clean your list if you've turned tracking off, or you may remove supporters who are still engaged.
There's no record of when you changed the setting. Consider noting the date, so you know which stats are complete.
Turning tracking back on
Check Track email opens and clicks again and save. Email sent from then on is tracked. No open or click data is recovered for email sent while tracking was off, and those blasts keep showing N/A.
If an automation had a mix of tracked and untracked sends, its results show the numbers that were recorded, with a note that tracking may have been off for some emails.
Related HOWTOs
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