NationBuilder

Create a more effective outreach strategy using targeted email blasting, text messaging, and social media to engage your most influential people.

Communication

Learn how to identify a precise audience of recipients and then send them a personalized email blast - from start to finish

Sending a targeted email

You've probably noticed NationBuilder doesn't have a traditional "inbox," instead we recommend creating an email path.

Set up an inbox and view incoming emails

Using techniques to engage people both inside and outside your network is key to building long lasting relationships with your community.

Build interest in your nation

Workflow guides

Broadcasters are the voices who speak publicly on behalf of your nation. All external communications are organized around broadcasters.

Understanding broadcasters

When you attach an email address to a broadcaster, you can send email blasts to your community!

Connect an email address to a broadcaster

If the custom domain you send email blasts from isn't hosted by NationBuilder — authenticate it to protect your email deliverability

Authenticate your email

We recommend receiving incoming email. By accepting incoming email for a broadcaster, people will be able to reply to your email blasts.

Benefits of receiving email in your nation

After connecting a third-party email address to a broadcaster, you may want to forward your email to that broadcaster.

Forward email to a broadcaster

Connecting a broadcaster to your social media accounts can help you spread the word and track supporters across multiple platforms!

Connect your Twitter account to a broadcaster

Connect your Facebook account to a broadcaster

Your nation’s phone number is a great place to track and consolidate incoming calls to your organization.

Create a phone number and access voicemail

Set up Broadcaster in a New Nation

Set up your broadcaster

Send Communications 

Create an email blast

Smart fields make it easy to dynamically personalize your email blasts for each recipient with variable data pulled from your nation

Smart fields in email

The email builder allows you to easily create great-looking emails. Here is a breakdown of the different areas you can configure.

Edit theme styles in the email builder

How to add preview text in an email blast

Configure preview text

Create or delete a custom email theme

If you're set up to receive incoming email via a broadcaster, you can integrate one-to-one email with your people database.

Send and view one-to-one email

Send email blasts using the email builder

Sending bulk email is a powerful engagement tactic. It allows you to quickly and effectively message your subscribers with calls to action.

Create an email blast using the classic editor

You can replicate a traditional multi-column layout for email blasts in NationBuilder.

Classic editor, how to create a multi-column email layout

Learn how to make a table that has visible lines.

Classic editor Make Table Lines Visible in Your Email

You can add clickable buttons to email blasts to send people to specific pages on your website.

Classic editor how to add a button to an email blast

If you do not want to use a public email theme, you may create your own custom one.

Classic editor create a custom email theme

If you're not comfortable with code, here's a work around to create a newsletter style email!

Create a newsletter style email without using code

Classic email editor documentation

Action pages in NationBuilder let you set up text message keywords that users can text to take the action linked to the page.

Create a text keyword

People are with their mobile phones 24/7. Use bulk text blasts to get your message opened faster, and text keywords sign people up easier.

Send and receive text messages

It’s important to know how your texts are delivered, what prevents them from reaching your supporters, and how this differs from email.

Understanding Text Deliverability

Send mass text messages

Email blasting is a key tool for any organization. This HOWTO will outline ways in which you can optimize your email deliverability.

How to optimize your email deliverability

We calculate the open rate of an email blast using only verified opens so that the results you see are accurate and actionable.

Understanding email open rates

Learn about communication consent, and how to collect and manage subscription preferences from subscribers

Understanding email opt-ins and unsubscribe links

Learn the basic steps to restore and maintain the health of your email list.

How to maintain a healthy email list

Learn how to read your email engagement metrics — open rate, bounce rate, etc. — so that you can improve your blasts' performance

Understand the results of your email blast

When you send an email blast your email list will immediately be updated with what email addresses were bad, or caused bounces.

Emailable status

A/B testing sends two versions of your email blast to measure which version receives the most engagement from your recipients.

A/B test your email blasts

Learn about email block lists, spam filters, spam traps, and other hard obstacles to email delivery

Understanding spam

This outlines how to manually split test your emails. Automatic email A/B testing is available to those on the Team plan or above.

Workflow guides

Set up your broadcaster

Send Communications

Manage email