Guide: How to redirect and filter, or message swap, for different UK regions

Sometimes, you may only want to allow people in Scotland (for example) to take part in an action, and you may want to display a message for people in other UK countries if they attempt to complete the form. Or perhaps you want people to take different actions or send different messages if they are in Wales to those in Scotland, but still only use one form to do so.

Because the region or country won’t necessarily be part of the supporter’s record, and you may not want to ask them to fill it in, it is better to use one of our contact databases to determine the region from their postcode.

If you’re using a postcode-enabled contact database…

If you want to redirect and filter or show a different message for supporters in a certain region (and you’re using one of our contact databases as the target settings, for example Westminster MPs) then the database contains a column called Biography 7 that holds the UK region which will be one of:

East Midlands
Eastern
London
North East
North West
Northern Ireland
Scotland
South East
South West
Wales
West Midlands
Yorkshire and Humber

It is then very easy to use this in your criteria.

Example

For example if you wanted to show a different target message for people in Scotland or Wales then add a new message to your target block in this way:

If you’re not using a postcode-enabled contact database…

If you’re not using a postcode-enabled contact database, for example you have used your own custom contact as the target, then the above method won’t work since Biography 7 won’t contain the region.

In this case, you may want to set up a “landing” campaign utilising our the UK Region lookup database. If you don’t have this database, let us know. This base action would then use redirect and filters to direct the supporter (based on their postcode) to the appropriate actions or static pages. If you send them to the 2nd page of an action it means they avoid filling in their details again. Or send them to a static page if you just want to display a message.

Example

This example is an action that targets the Big Corp CEO. However, only people in Scotland should take action. If the supporter doesn’t live in Scotland, it redirects them to a static page, otherwise it redirects them to the CEO action

Create your email to target action as usual that targets the Big Corp CEO. and make it live once you’re happy with it
Create a static page for people that don’t live in Scotland. On this page you could explain it is a Scotland-only action, and give some suggestions of others things to do. Make it live.
Duplicate your CEO action – this duplicate will be the action that channels supporters to see the right page depending on where they live. So it’s the first one they’ll see. Give it a name to make it clear this is the landing page
Go to the admin settings of the landing page, and change the target to “UK / SPECIAL : UK Region Lookup” (if you don’t see this in your list of targets, give support a shout)
Go to edit your action, and go to Processing Rules > Redirect and Filter. Add a new filter and choose IF “The database returns the value”, OF “Organization” “that is not equal to” and then click the pencil icon to select “Scotland”. You’ll then choose your static page as the destination for non-Scottish action takers
Add another filter with the criteria of IF “the database returns the value” OF “Organization” “that is equal to” “Scotland”. This time the destination will be your CEO action. You can choose “Page 2” for this so that it skips the first page since they’ll have filled this in already on the landing page.
Save and test
Ensure you promote the landing page action, not the CEO one, so that it directs people properly