Switchboard Collective: Advanced Targeting
What is the Switchboard Collective: Advanced Targeting?
Switchboard Collective is an opt-in program which enables Advanced Targeting for audience creation. As a member of the Switchboard Collective, you can leverage shared engagement data to suppress phone numbers that have opted out across other participating organizations or refine reactivation targets in your email program by focusing on email addresses which have clicked in other participants’ email programs. No personal identifiable information is shared between Switchboard Collective participants - you can only access data for phones or emails which already exist in your account. Additionally, data is aggregated and not traceable to a specific program.
By default, your organization is opted out. To opt in, fill out this agreement: https://swtch.to/sb-collective.
How can I speed up processing times?
The Switchboard Collective has millions of phones/emails! When you create an audience using Advanced Targeting, we are now pulling from this large data set which means your searches or lists may take longer to generate (including the size preview). We recommend the following steps as you all begin to take advantage of the Collective:
1. Set up your Audiences in Advance
Some Advanced Targeting filters process faster than others. For example, while the 7-day clickers filter typically takes just a few minutes, all-time Clickers or donors can take up to an hour in some cases. If you want to know the size of your audience ahead of time, be sure to set up your searches in advance so your audiences have plenty of time to process. Note: we will always skip unsubscribed emails or opted-out phones, so you can skip the “cleaning” step of your audience creation to save time.
Another easy way to ensure your broadcasts and blasts start sending promptly is to save all new audiences as a static list in addition to a dynamic search. Lists will typically be faster to send to because searches refresh at send time (unless you have finalized, as described below). As a reminder, you can always save a list from an existing search on the search details page.
2. Finalize Time-Sensitive Broadcasts
To help with the increased processing time of audiences built with Advanced Targeting, Switchboard now has a “Finalize Audience” feature. This is designed to help your broadcasts/blasts go out faster by letting Switchboard do most of the audience processing work in advance. You can still edit the content of your messages after the audience is finalized, so we recommend clicking “Finalize Audience” once you know who you want to send to, even if your copy still needs final approval. That way, when you schedule or send your broadcast/blast, the audience is ready to go. Learn more about this new feature here.
FAQs
- Is there a cost to participate?
- There is no additional cost to join in 2024 for active Switchboard accounts that are sending text broadcasts or email blasts.
- I don’t want to share this data, what do I do?
- This is an opt in only program. If you do not provide affirmative consent, there is no change.
- How will organizations access the targeting data?
- There will be new filters in the audience builder.
- What data am I sharing if I opt in?
- If a phone or email has clicked a text or email, how many times, and when
- If a phone has replied to a broadcast, how many times, and when
- If a phone or email has donated from any broadcast/blast via a Switchboard tracked link, how many times, and when
- If a phone or email has been sent a text or email, how many times, and when (and if it resulted in an error or not)
- If a phone or email has opted out or unsubscribed and when
- What data is NOT being shared?
- No personal identifiable information (PII) is being shared across organizations to create new phone or email records (including but not limited to phone numbers, email addresses, first name, last name, address, custom fields)
- Participating organizations will not be able to trace the origin of the activity data they have access to. This data is aggregated and not traceable to a specific program.
- Does this help with acquisition?
- No, Switchboard is not sharing any PII across organizations.
- Your organization will not have access to any new phones or emails, you will just be able to better target within your current universe.
- What if I change my mind?
- You can opt out by emailing support@oneswitchboard.com. Starting the following business day, your data will not be used to inform the audience creation of any new saved searches or lists.
