June 2024 Product Update

This month is all about data and deliverability!   

New reusable fields so you can more easily manage your data

Many of you asked for ways to track external database IDs in Switchboard, so we added {{sb_custom_ID}} to our reusable fields. This ID will be available in your exports so you can easily upload data to external platforms. We also added {{sb_custom_score}} and {{sb_custom_source}} so you can use your internal scoring system and list sources in Switchboard, and use these fields in the audience builder.

Customize your exports! 

You can now choose specific fields when you export data from Switchboard to make your exports more manageable. Find this functionality when exporting any of your saved search details. Want to see this somewhere else? We are rolling this out across other types of exports on Switchboard very soon!

As many of you may know, we have been working to make it easy to run both your texting and email programs on Switchboard. We saw an opportunity to deliver never-before-seen deliverability support and transparency to revolutionize how digital staff can leverage better tech to run great programs. 

Switchboard Email Reputation Score gives you IP placement transparency

Many organizations onboard their email program to an email vendor and don’t have visibility into what IP they are on or why they were put there. On Switchboard, your IP assignment will be visible to you at all times, and our meritocratic scoring system lets you understand how sending behavior positively (or negatively) impacts IP pool placement. 

Every email program on Switchboard will get a Switchboard Email Reputation Score that correlates to a Shared IP Pool. This score is calculated based on open rate, click rate, spam rate, and other factors. Programs will know exactly how Switchboard calculates this score and be able to make adjustments to improve their placement. You can read more about the details here.

Automated daily email volume maximum

Email deliverability is both an art and a science; but one thing we do know is that accidentally sending too many emails in a day can have long-term impacts on your deliverability. We’ve been hearing from email experts that deliverability is increasingly difficult, and email service providers such as Google and Yahoo are making it harder to reach inboxes unless best practices are followed. 

To help with this, Switchboard email accounts will have a daily email allotment: a ceiling of how many emails you can send in a day, dynamically calculated based on your previous sending patterns. Now, if you accidentally press send on a 100k email list without realizing, you won't tank your email program overnight! Instead, your emails will roll over to the next morning. This also means that if you’re new to Switchboard, you can upload your full email list, click send once, and have your send go out over the next several days without you scheduling back to back blasts.

Read more about our email volume allotment here.

Actionable deliverability data at your fingertips! 

Tracking deliverability metrics day-to-day can be a daunting task, especially if you are managing multiple email programs across many departments or clients. Switchboard email users get access to a deliverability dashboard which shows data across all of accounts in one place: keep an eye out on google spam rates, open rates per Blast, or even Google Domain Reputation over time. All of this is free with your Switchboard email account!

That’s all for now! We are starting to work on some voter contact features and will have updates to share in our next email - if you’d like to provide input as we build these out, please reply to this email!

Happy texting, emailing, and all things in between,

The Switchboard Team