Updating constituent records through advocacy pages

Kristin Koch · September 2009

Hi Convio clients!

I wanted to see if other clients would find it useful if Convio were to make an improvement the advocacy tool.

As it now stands, if a constituent/activist participates in an advocacy page and changes his/her info (like uses the page to update their address), that change is not captured.

I learned that this situation used to affect donation pages, too, but was fixed after it was classified as a bug (E-30633). It turns out that Convio has classified this situation as an enhancement request in the advocacy module. This means that an improvement to the advocacy module is not being fast-tracked. (We have been in Convio since December 2007 and asked about it a long time ago.)

How do folks feel about this?

Have any recently migrated GetActive clients see response rates change as a result of this situation? (For Convio-only clients: GetActive captures changes.)

Our response rates have gone down by several points since moving to Convio, and I suspect that forcing constituents to type in a changed address over and over again has discouraged participation (or is at least one factor in decreased response rates). This in turn has affected our viral list growth. I consider the situation to be pretty serious, and am wondering if any other clients feel similarly.

Thanks for your input!

Kristin Koch

Deputy Director of Communications for Online Strategies

NARAL Pro-Choice America

kkoch@prochoiceamerica.org

Grace Markarian · September 2009

I completely agree that this should be put on the fast track! To be honest, as a newer Convio client, I didn't know that this was the case with Action Alerts. I assumed (always a bad thing) that constituent data would be updated at any point of entry (action alert, event, donation). So I'm pretty shocked to learn that's not the case.

We've seen a drop in action rates, too, and I strongly believe that any bug fix/enhancement that makes it easier for people to participate in our forms without retyping/correcting data is a high priority.

Thanks for shedding some light on this, Kristin!

Grace Markarian

Online Communications Manager

The Humane Society of the United States

gmarkarian@humanesociety.org

Heather Tallent · September 2009

I agree that this should be fast-tracked! This could definitely be one of the factors leading to declining response rates.

While we're on the subject, I'd love to hear what other plans Convio has for improving the advocacy module. It's been pretty frustrating to lose some of the GetActive functionality that made our jobs easier and our alerts and list growth more effective (TAF, etc.). Does Convio ever host client working groups on specific modules?

Heather Tallent

Online Communications Manager

Humane Society International

htallent@hsi.org

Robin McCarthy · September 2009

We've gotten around this by putting auto-login code on all our action alerts in messages. If users are logged when they change their address information, Convio updates the contituent record. Since the vast majority of our actions are driven from email, I'm optimistic, although our migration from GetActive is still to new to have a good sense of how it may may affected overall action number.

Kristin Koch · September 2009

Robin McCarthy:
We've gotten around this by putting auto-login code on all our action alerts in messages. If users are logged when they change their address information, Convio updates the contituent record. Since the vast majority of our actions are driven from email, I'm optimistic, although our migration from GetActive is still to new to have a good sense of how it may may affected overall action number.

Hi Robin,

Actually, the situation you described does not update constituent records, unfortunately.

Convio tested 9 scenarios to determine the conditions where constituent records do get updated via an action page.

Addresses do get updated when someone is logged in by "someone going to the site and typing in their user name and password." (definition provided by a Convio support person)

According to their testing, the "auto-login" scenario that you describe doesn't result in the record being updated.

I agree that clients probably use the auto-login functionality all the time, since it probably significantly increases response rates (in fact, I wish there were a quicker way to add the auto-login setting, I think I remember it being quicker in GetActive), which is why it's a huge problem that it doesn't work.

Jeana from Support performed the tests for us, and the problem is logged as a bug with no scheduled date to be fixed.

Hopefully if we can get enough former GA clients on board, we can encourage Convio to fix the problem sooner rather than later. I've been lobbying for it to be fixed since late 2007, so let's hope it gets fixed soon!

Thanks so much,

Kristin

Kristin Koch · September 2009

Heather Tallent:
I agree that this should be fast-tracked! This could definitely be one of the factors leading to declining response rates.

While we're on the subject, I'd love to hear what other plans Convio has for improving the advocacy module. It's been pretty frustrating to lose some of the GetActive functionality that made our jobs easier and our alerts and list growth more effective (TAF, etc.). Does Convio ever host client working groups on specific modules?

Heather Tallent

Online Communications Manager

Humane Society International

htallent@hsi.org

Hi Heather,

I agree that the TAF functionality is a huge issue.

There have been improvements to the TAF functionality in the past few releases, however, I think former GA clients could give some great feedback to Convio to make this section of Advocacy work even better.

We have seen our organic list growth shrink significantly - I'm doing some recording of it right now so that I can provide that to Convio.

Would HSUS be willing to track your GA list growth vs. your Convio list growth too? Hopefully a few organizations can provide some hard data to Convio, to convince them that this is a major problem that deserves dedicated resources.

Thanks!

Kristin

Brian Rubenstein · November 2009

I'm shocker to hear that doesn't already happen. I always assumed that it did. I agree this should be pushed as a bug fix and not an enhancement.

Brian Rubenstein

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

Tessa Simonds · February 2010

Another GA --> Convio client that would like this classified as a bug, rather than enhancement.

We had no idea this was not being done -- although it makes sense, given some of the mail we receive on this issue.

For advocacy-focused clients, this is a real bummer.

Any updates on this issue?

Thanks everyone!

Tessa Simonds

Online Campaign Coordinator

Free Press.net

tsimonds@freepress.net

Michelle Shefter · February 2010

Tessa Simonds:
Another GA --> Convio client that would like this classified as a bug, rather than enhancement.

We had no idea this was not being done -- although it makes sense, given some of the mail we receive on this issue.

For advocacy-focused clients, this is a real bummer.

Any updates on this issue?

Thanks everyone!

Tessa Simonds

Online Campaign Coordinator

Free Press.net

tsimonds@freepress.net

Hey all,

I'm happy to report that this feature is on it's way! Right now the product enhancement is slated for release in the mid-April patch, but the contents of that release haven't been finalized yet and so there is a small chance that it could be pushed back to the following release. Be on the lookout for release notes for official word in the coming weeks.....

Cheers,

Michelle

Updating constituent records through advocacy pages

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