How is ActBlue donation data used in audience creation and message customization?

When making a donation through ActBlue, donors may provide both their email and phone number or just an email address.

How that donation data shows up in your audiences depends on which Donations filter you're using — the existing filter or the new enhanced filter (Beta). You can switch between the two while building your audience in the Audience Builder. Learn more about that here.

Legacy Donations filter

If you are creating a phone list using ActBlue donation data, Switchboard will include all phones that are associated with an ActBlue donation. Donations made with email only will not appear in phone audiences, even if the email and phone number are linked in Switchboard.

If you personalize your text message copy using something like {{sb_total_donations}}, Switchboard will only count the donations that have the phone number associated with them in ActBlue's data.

For example:

1. Donor makes first donation with email (example@email.com) and phone number (555-0123)

2. Same donor makes second donation with only email (example@email.com)

3. An email-based search will show both donations

4. A phone-based search will only show the first donation

While Switchboard uses phone and email links (which get set when you import or upload a list) for calculations in the fundraising dashboard, these links are only made when using the new enhanced Donation filter. If using the legacy filter, even if we know a phone is associated with an email, and that email is tied to an ActBlue donation, the phone will not currently be included in a phone list of donors.

Enhanced Donations filter (beta)

The enhanced filter uses the phone and email links you already have when it builds your audience. So a donation made only with an email can bring that supporter into a phone audience, as long as you already have a phone number connected to them in Switchboard.

Using the same example above, in step 4, a phone-based search with the enhanced filter would include this donor because their email-only second donation is recognized as coming from a supporter you already have a phone number for.