For all those refcode-happy committees, this feature’s for you! Now you search for a specific refcode on the contribution form statistics page.
There are two ways to get to that page (and both require you to be logged in): if you’re already on your contribution form, go to the Contributors tab, and click on “View Form Statistics” or just insert your contribution form name into the url below:
secure.actblue.com/pages/CONTRIBUTION_FORM_NAME/statistics
To try out the new feature, just type in all or part of the refcode you want to see, and you’ll find only those refcodes that match your search:
It doesn’t get simpler than that!
Our developers also threw in a couple of bonus features. The first one allows you to add your search terms to a URL parameter on the contribution form Statistics page: ?refcode=search
This way, when you load the page you’ll only see the search results that you defined in the URL param. Here’s an example of using this feature to find specific refcodes on an old ActBlue contribution form. Back then, we were using the same contribution form for each email send and used refcodes to track the sends, including using year and month digits to keep track of when we sent them. If we wanted to see refcodes for October 2008, the URL param would be ?refcode=200810
The other features will help you find a “starts with…” or “ends with…” match. To only find the refcodes that begin with a certain character string, use the ^ symbol.
For example, if you write “^footer” then results that start with “footer” will be the only ones that pop up.
Adding a $ after the character string will only return refcode results that end with your chosen phrase.
For instance, at ActBlue if we re-send an email, we’ll add a “_r” to the end of our original email’s refcode. Typing “_r$” into the search box helps us quickly find those results without having to scroll through the entire page.
At ActBlue, we generally use upward of 20 unique refcode (and one contribution form) for each email we send. And we assign a different refcode to each fundraising link, which makes it easy to analyze test results. If you’re just getting started using refcodes, check out our tutorial for more information.
This new refcode search feature will let you hone in on the refcodes you care about. Let us know how you’re using this new feature by emailing us at info[at]actblue dot com!
