If you use Action Network to manage your email program, we strongly recommend connecting your Civic Shout account to ensure that your new email community members are in your CRM and ready to be contacted within seconds of signing up for your list.

It’s a simple process that has tangible benefits – and will also save you from having to upload and download files of your new Civic Shout opt-ins.

Once connected, you'll be able to find mirror versions of any petition you create on Civic Shout inside of Action Network (after they've received one or more signatures since the time of integration).

Activists that sign will be added to the mirrored Action Network petition as if they had signed an actual AN petition.

This provides you with the same Action Network capabilities you're used to when it comes to reviewing signers' activity and adding them to lists. 

 

Here’s how to connect Civic Shout to Action Network:

 

  1. In your Action Network group, click “Details” from the top navbar. Then at the bottom of the dropdown, click “API & Sync”

  2. After the new page loads, on the left side of the screen, under “Your API Key”, copy the 32-character string of letters and numbers in the gray box. It’s immediately above the bright green button.

    IMPORTANT: If you're an administrator of multiple Action Network groups PLEASE ensure that you are copying the API Key for the correct group! To check, look at the top right of the screen where it says “currently editing” to ensure that the correct group is selected.

  3. Back in your CivicShout.com account, click the "CRM integration" icon (cloud with an up arrow) in the left navbar. 

  4. Click the “Get Set Up” button next to the Action Network logo.

  5. Paste your 32 character API key from Action Network into the field and click the “Save & Test Connection” button. Then confirm by clicking “OK”.

  6. If your API key was correct, you should then see a green box reading "Success! Your CRM is now connected and ready for immediate action."

 

Please note that there may be cases in which you won’t see a 100% match in contact counts between your Action Network group and contacts available through Civic Shout’s dashboard.

When a petition is in the midst of getting a lot of signatures, it can take Action Network a little time to catch up. So, it's common for counts to be off by a fair amount until they do.

Once the rush of signature activity has died down, your numbers will start to match your petition's Civic Shout dashboard more accurately.

However, we've found that some discrepancies are still to be expected.

In part, because some names get blocked by AN’s spam filter (even though we use a 3rd party email validation service before syncing) or from system errors on their end. In our testing, about 2-6 contacts per one thousand could potentially fail to sync.

If you have questions or run into problems, send us a note at support@civicshout.com and we’ll get you set up right away.