As an association with the Community platform, you want to be able to add individuals in your database to a group in Community as seamlessly as possible. Maybe your destination group in Community needs to include both members from a certain membership type, status, or category, but you also want to allow non-members or individuals that aren't included in that member group to add themselves or be added.
Adding the member group to a list is easy- you set up and save the report according to your criteria, add the individuals from that report to a list, and sync the list to the saved report so new members are added, and dropped members are removed, automatically. See the Smart List article for more details.
But what about those nonmembers and members that aren't covered in the report that wish to opt in to the group? We can't edit the synced list; GrowthZone will overwrite any changes when the report syncs to the list.
Marketing Automation to the rescue!
In this example, we'll be setting up three GrowthZone lists:
- Member List: This list WILL be synced with a report and will automatically add individuals with an active membership and your other criteria of choice to the list. This list will NOT be visible in the Info Hub, will NOT be synced to Community, and should not be manually changed by staff, as the nightly sync will overwrite any changes.
- Opt-in List: This list will NOT be synced with a report, will NOT be synced with Community, and can be visible in the Info Hub (and even published to your website!) if desired to allow non-members and/or members that are not covered under the member criteria/report to join. It can be manually managed in the back office by staff, and members can be added/deactivated/removed as needed.
- Destination List: This is the list that both the above lists will be added to, and will be synced with Community to create the group. This list will NOT be synced with a report and will NOT be visible in the Info Hub.
When our lists are configured and populated (or ready to be populated), we go to the Marketing Automation module.
- Create a Marketing Automation workflow and name it for the Destination List that will be synced to Community.
- Add both the Member list and the Opt-In list as source lists.
- Add one step- "Add to List"- and point to the Destination list.
- Activate the workflow!
And now you have two disparate lists being joined together and synced to Community under a single list.
Timing details:
- Marketing Automation steps update once an hour, and lists synced to Community are updated "real time" upon changes.
- The Members list will update every night via the report.
- The Opt-In list will update as people join/are added. IMPORTANT: changes to this list should only be performed in GrowthZone. See notes below re: deactivations.
- The list combination step will run once an hour if changes are detected to the Opt-In list.
- The combined Destination List will then feed into Community about once an hour IF any changes are detected.
Notes on deactivating/removing contacts:
- The sync from a GrowthZone list to a Community group is essentially one-way, only adding new individuals to the group as they are added to the list.
- If a member drops off the list, unsubscribes, or is removed from the list in GrowthZone in some way (for example, their membership is dropped), the list sync from GrowthZone to Community will not remove/deactivate them in Community. Let the report sync update the list in GrowthZone, then go to the affected Community group and remove/deactivate them there as well.