How to create custom Saved Searches and Lists

In addition to the four Saved Searches that HQ will be providing you with at launch, we recommend that you create custom Saved Searches for your other regular audiences. 

If you’re new to Connect or if you’re not comfortable with using Create a List or Questions, you should ask your Connect Manager to create these for you, or attend one of our training sessions on creating Saved Searches before you dive straight in. 

The beauty of Targeted Email is that you can target your subscribers using the data you have available in Connect. There are a few ways that you may want to approach this, and each local party’s approach may differ, this is why we haven’t created these Saved Searches for you.

When creating a custom Saved Search on the Create a List page in My Campaign, there are a few things you need to think about and a couple of steps which you must always include:

• Purpose of email: What is your goal? e.g. I would like to recruit volunteers
• Target audience: Who do you want to include in your Saved Search? e.g. people who I know are active or interested in volunteering
• Connect Data: What data do I have to help me target these subscribers? E.g. Volunteer status question and wholesaler / deliverer activity. Reminder - if you’re using your own Questions to Create a List you need to make sure that you’re using Questions from the correct cycle and that you’re confident that the data entered against those Questions is correct
• Suppressions: Are these correct? These will be automatically applied when you create a Saved Search so you should check for any that are not applicable for email. e.g. do not doorstep, do not phone, do not text, do not mail - you can change these from exclude to include using the dropdown on the suppressions tab
• Subscribed: You must narrow your list to those who are subscribed 
• Email Interest Tags (Content Preferences): You must narrow your list to subscribers with a tag of Email Interests:Local News for e-focuses / ward lists and to subscribers with a tag of Email Interests:Campaigning News for ‘everything else’ (see previous section on content preferences for more)

The more targeted you can make your lists and your content, the better results you will see from your email marketing campaigns.

This is why we’d recommend having a selection of standard audiences you can send to such as:

Super activists - your exec members and the people who are active every week / month.

Activists - people who are active, but less frequently. Might include deliverers, people who attend social events.

Potential members - people who you can occasionally contact and see if they are interested in joining the Lib Dems. This can include helpers, previous donors, and registered supporters

New members - members who’ve joined in the last six months.

There is no fixed way to build and narrow your audience when creating custom Saved Searches - you can decide how best to use the data and questions you have available to create your lists - however, we’ve provided some examples of how you might want to create custom lists for Activists, Wards and Petition signers in the appendix as a starting point.