Variables are a great feature that allows you to personalize notices and ballots for each voter. This is part of the setup process. Variables can be added to the notice and ballot pages. You can even add your own custom information from the Voters Page.
To illustrate, instead of using the default notice, notices can be personalized to each voter by adding their name., Here is Buddy’s personalized email notice!
Notice page
Variables can be added to Email notices, SMS notices, and Printed notices when using Advanced Notice Customization. Keep in mind, using Advanced Notice Customization is only available at Premium or above tiers.
To add variables to notices:
1. Select Advanced Notice Customization.
2. In the email notice select "Variables" to show a list of all variables available to add. For faster access, the variable names can be, also, typed.
3. After adding variables, we recommend previewing the notice! Select the Preview button to view what the notice looks. Previews use voter information from the first voter on the voter list.
Voters Page
Settings from the voter page can be used as variables such as groups and voter weighting. Optionally, you can use additional voter information from the voter list. Once a voter list is imported, those variables will appear in the “Variables” menu.
How to add extra variables:
Use the import voter list feature to upload a file with the added variable information. Adding variables to the voter list is not available with the entry or copy and paste import methods.
Select “all columns” to import the extra fields.
More details on adding extra information can be found in this support article:
Ballot Page
The same process can be used to add variables to a ballot. Variables can also be added to the:
Ballot Information and Instructions
Question Details
Candidate Profiles
Voter Instructions
Review page instructions
Confirmation Page
To add a variable, select the "Variables" drop-down menu to see all the variables you can available to add to your ballot.
Tip: you can type the name of the variables to search for it quickly and specifically!
Select the variable that you'd like to add, and ElectionBuddy will add the variable wherever your cursor is.
An Example:
If you would like to greet your voters when they open up their ballots, you could use the {{voter_label}} variable to populate voters' names on the ballot:
This would result in the following:
This example uses the {{voter_label}} variable to pull the data that we've included in our voter list for the Label column, and allows you to directly address your voter on the ballot!
For any questions, please send us a chat using our Buddy Messenger in the bottom right of the screen.