Why creating your campaign events on SupporterBase is so important
Creating your events on SupporterBase is important for a few different reasons. The first is that by doing so, your events will automatically appear on your campaign website (whether that is a listed or unlisted page). You’ll also have a URL generated instantly for you to share with your group of supporters. Secondly, you will be able to manage the RSVPs to your event, using the in-built communications tools of SupporterBase to easily promote your event and then correspond with supporters who sign up.
Creating an event in SupporterBase
To create an event, simply click on the ‘Events’ tab on the left menu, and then select ‘Create new event’.
This will bring you to a simple event creation screen where, by following a few easy steps, you can create your event
Firstly, every event in SupporterBase is attached to a group. Selecting the group your event will be linked to means those captains of the group will be able to manage the event you create. Then select your event type, usually simply ‘in-person’ or ‘virtual’, but your campaign may have set up unique event types which you can use. Next enter the contact details, address (if in-person), and event details (name, day, time etc.).
Now you have the option to select whether you will be setting up a single or recurring event. If you select the ‘Recurring event’ button you will have more options available to set a schedule for the future occurrences.
The next option is to add filtering tags to your event. These may have been pre-filled when you selected your ‘Event type,’ and are a way to link your event to others on your campaign website so that potential volunteers can select to see particular events. For example, you might use a ‘doorknock’ event tag so that when someone viewing your campaign website selects to view all doorknock events, yours will show on the list.
Finally there are two text boxes to fill in. The first is the event description. This will be the main text on the event page on your website. This may also be pre-filled as part of your selected event type. The second is the autoresponse email. This is the email that gets automatically sent when someone RSVPs to your event. By default it comes pre-filled with all of the information someone signing up would need, including code to pull all of the relevant event data. You can edit this text, but it is recommended to keep the code as is.
Promoting your event
Once you have completed the event creation process, you will be redirected to the event screen in SupporterBase. This shows you all of the details of your event and includes the ‘public URL,’ which is the link you can share to your group to promote your event. You can also find all of the events associated with your group in the ‘Group events’ menu item on the left.
There are four ways you can promote your event in SupporterBase.
Via your website
Once approved, and depending on your organisation's configuration preferences, your event can be automatically published to a chosen calendar page on your organisation's website. As detailed in this separate post, we can create a range of different events calendar displays and functionality options: including in the form of maps, calendars, and lists, combined with colour coding and filtering - whatever is going to make it easiest for your volunteers to find and sign up to your events.
To send an email blast to promote your event, first make sure to copy your event link, and then navigate to the ‘Email blasts’ section of SupporterBase by clicking on the ‘Create new email blast’ menu item on the left.
This brings you to the email blast creation screen, where you can select your group, add any filters you need, and enter in your name, the email subject, and email text. Write your email copy, including the link to your event. Once you are happy with your email, click ‘Create email blast.’
Creating the email blast wont send it, rather, it will take you to the following review page.
Here you can check your copy, recipient list, send a test email (always recommended if you have links!), edit the copy, or delete the blast. If you are a Captain, you will be able to send the email by clicking the ‘Approve’ button. If you are a Vice-Captain, you will need to have your blast approved before it is sent.
Once you are happy with the email and have clicked the ‘Approve’ button, you will be able to either send the email blast straight away, or schedule it to be sent at a future time. To edit or cancel future emails, and to check on the performance of past email blasts, simply click the ‘Email blast’ menu item. This will show you all of the email blasts associated with the groups you manage on SupporterBase, and by clicking on the black ‘View’ link you will be able to see the statistics for that email blast, including open and click rate.
SMS
SMS is a great way to ensure you get your message out to your supporters and volunteers. In terms of event promotion and management, SMS is often best used as a way to remind RSVPs of upcoming events they are scheduled to attend. Setting up an SMS blast as a reminder is a simple way to increase your attendance. To do this, all you need to do is select ‘Create new SMS blast’ from the drop down menu ‘SMS blasts.’
In this case, rather than choosing who to send our message to based on group membership, we can use the ‘Event RSVPs/Attendees’ selector. This will allow us to first select our group, and then the particular event RSVPs we want to send our reminder to.
Here you can also select to filter based on sending to all RSVPs, or in the case of follow-up communications, to those who attended your event. Add your SMS text, and once you are happy with your SMS, click ‘Create SMS Blast.’ Here you have the same options as with sending an email blast, including the ability to schedule your SMS send.
Note: when scheduling either SMS or Email in SupporterBase, the list of recipients will be generated just before the scheduled send, so in this case, you could set up your reminder SMS when you set up the event and you have no RSVPs. When the SMS sends, it will pull a list of the current RSVPs then to send to.
In the same way as email blasts, you can view all of your SMS blasts by clicking on the ‘SMS blast’ menu item, and again, selecting the back ‘View’ button to the right of each blast will allow you to see the analytics for that blast.
Calling
Making calls through SupporterBase is an easy and highly effective way to recruit supporters and volunteers to your events. The best way to do this is to generate call lists and host Calling Parties where you and your fellow volunteers can make calls to promote all of your campaign events. For more information on how to set up and run a Calling Party using SupporterBase, please see this guide.
Extra tip: calling to confirm RSVPs
A great way to make sure your RSVPs turn up to your event is to make confirmation calls. This also means that you can achieve more accurate RSVP numbers by cancelling RSVPs if they cannot make the event. You can do this in SupporterBase by navigating to your event and scrolling down to view your RSVPs.
By clicking on the ‘Call’ button associated with each of your RSVPs you can start a 1:1 call with them in order to confirm their RSVP for your event. Using the ‘RSVP status’ drop down you can either confirm or cancel their RSVP. If you cancel it, they will be removed from the RSVP list.
During your Event
Tracking attendance for your event is a crucial step in order to accurately measure your RSVP to attendance ratio, as well as feeding that important information back into the central campaign database. Attendance data will be added to the supporter’s record and is also important for filtering communications later on.
Marking attendance using SupporterBase is simple, all you need to do is click the ‘Review attendees’ button on your event dashboard.
In this screen you can see a list of RSVPs and check them off to mark attendance.
Of course, to record this data you will need a computer or tablet at the event (it is possible to use this area of SupporterBase on your phone, but can be a little tricky.) If you know you won’t be able to use a device to mark attendance, you can select the ‘Print RSVP list’ option from your event dashboard. This will create a PDF for you to download and print to mark off on the day, remembering you will need to go into SupporterBase and mark attendance afterwards.
After your Event
As part of a humming volunteer recruitment and event program, you will always want to make sure to follow up with RSVPs and attendees to make sure to thank them for their efforts and invite them to future events. As we explored earlier, you can easily do this using SupporterBase via email or SMS blasts. All you need to do is follow the same steps as above to setup either an email or SMS blast, filtering initially to send to ‘Event RSVPs/Attendees.’ Select your event, and then choose either RSVPs, attendees, or non-attendees in the ‘RSVP type’ dropdown. This allows you to craft different messages to those who attended your event, versus those who RSVPd but did not attend.
Adding shifts and rostering for polling day
On any event in SupporterBase you can choose to add shifts by clicking on the ‘manage shifts’ button on the event screen. This allows you to create roles, shifts, and have these display on your website for volunteers to select. For information on how to use shifts for events, including rostering for polling day and pre-poll, please see this guide.