Target database: House of Lords

Summary

Name	UK / English : House of Lords Political Exchange
Major update schedule	Quarterly
Records	784 records
Region	UK
Can be used for Tweet-to-Target pages?	Yes
Can be used for Click-to-Call pages?	No
Can be used for Political Broadcasts?	Yes (use Bio 1 for unique addresses)
Can be used for Data Mapping?	No
Allows for target setting filtering?	No

This database contains the members of the House of Lords. It is updated every quarter. If you want to find out when the last major update occurred, please contact Support.

It can be used for email-to-target, X post-to-target and for political broadcasts.

Using for email to target and tweet to target pages

A supporter’s postcode cannot be used to select the Lord or Lords to target for an email-to-target page or tweet-to-target page.

How they are targeted is up to you but we suggest using this as a custom database if used in email-to-target or tweet-to-target pages, with a randomiser that can choose a target at random.

If you want that set up, please contact Support.

Using for political broadcasts

Some targets in this database share an email address. Emails sent here are forwarded to individual members.

However, we understand that the address cannot be used for bulk mail shots or to forward one message to multiple Members. Any identical messages sent to more than six Members of the House of Lords will be deleted.

Therefore you can use the “Biography 1” field to select unique addresses (Biography 1 = Y) when sending your political broadcast.

Description

The House of Lords the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

The number of members in the House of Lords is not fixed like MPs. It currently has 784 sitting members.

Lords are not related to a region so a postcode lookup would not work on this database.

Structure

Column name	What it holds
Salutation	The complete salutation of the target, e.g. “Dear Baroness Featherstone,”
Organization	Not used
Position held	Not used
Title	Not used
First name	The target’s first name
Last name	The target’s last name
Suffix	The target’s suffix, e.g. blank, “MBE” etc
Phone number	Not used
Fax number	Not used
Various address fields	The address fields of the target if available
Party image	URL of their party’s image, used for Twitter actions
Biography 1	If the address is unique, this is “Y” – useful for political broadcasts
Biography 2	If unreachable, this is “N”
Twitter Handle (Biography 3)	The Twitter handle of the target if available, e.g. “@lfeatherstone”
Biography 4	Not used
Biography 5	Not used
Biography 6	Not used
Biography 7	Not used
Party (Biography 8)	The target’s political party (one of Bishops, Conservative Independent, Conservative, Crossbench, Democratic Unionist Party, Green Party, Independent Social Democrat, Labour Independent, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Lord Speaker, Non-affiliated, Plaid Cymru, Ulster Unionist Party)

Target-a-random-lord method

Create a new Email-to-Target page using the Lords database as a custom database. The support team can add this for you. One of the columns in the custom database will be a Match field and be a sequential number from 1 to 784.
On your page you will need, at least, the Email Address and some Supporter Field (not Question) as a Match field, which the following code will insert a random number on. When the supporter arrives on the page, a random number will be added to this field and when submitted, used to choose the target. Note that the number will overwrite any value in this field so choose wisely.
Add a Code Block at the bottom of the first page with the following code in (requires jQuery):

<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
  var lords = new Array();
  var num = 784;
  var i = 1;
  var exclude = new Array();
  var matchFieldID = "#" + "en__field_supporter_NOT_TAGGED_2";

  /* Exclude values if you wish. Copy the line below and change the number */
  //exclude.push(35);

  /* create array of 73 index and 73 value. don't create if number matches forbidden numbers */
  while(i <= num){
    if($.inArray(i,exclude) == -1){
      lords.push(i);
    }
      i++;
    }

  /* count the size of the new array (no. of lords after exclusions). minus 1 because 0 is an array index */
  countLords = lords.length - 1;

  /* get a random value between 1 and no. of remaining lords */
  var lordIndex = 1 + Math.floor(Math.random() * countLords);

  /* get the lord value and add to field */
  var lordValue = lords[lordIndex];

  $(matchFieldID).val(lordValue);
});
</script>

4. Test that the code works

5. You can now hide the match field on the page, since the supporter does not need to see the random number. Find the name of the field by inspecting the page and finding the class of the field (it will be something like .en__field__NOT_TAGGED_2). Add code like this the code block, at the top or bottom:

<style>
.en__field--NOT_TAGGED_2 {
  display: none;
}
</style>

6. Test again. Reach out to support in case of any difficulties