Recruiting for the first time

After you've set up your community theming and portal, it's time to add members.

This topic provides an overview of how to recruit members for your community using the application.

Tip: If you already have active members whose information is stored elsewhere, you can add these active members to Community by performing a system upload instead of forcing the active members to undergo recruitment again. For more information, see these topics:

Only use this method to add members who have already consented to joining your community. Adding emails from people who have not consented may violate anti-spam legislation. For more information, see Alida External Sample Waiver.

Note: Before you start recruiting members and distributing activities, use the community launch checklist to ensure you're ready.

Step 1: Create your profile variables

Think about the demographic information you want to collect and eventually use as profile variables.

For example, do you want to be able to segment report data based on whether someone is a repeat or casual customer? Do you want to be able to filter community members by gender, region, household income, or marital status, and then only distribute activities to specific groups? Consider the pieces of information you'll need to optimize your community and make it work for you.

Then, add the profile variables to the application:

Step 2: Understand the recruitment experience from the participants' perspective

Members have slightly different recruitment experiences depending on how the recruitment survey is distributed. Understanding the nuances of their experience can help you better plan your recruitment.

For more information, see The recruitment experience for members.

Note: If you have multiple communities, be aware that a member can only belong to or try joining one community at a time. If pending or active members of one community try to join another community, they will be redirected to the correct portal.

Step 3: Build your recruitment survey

Building a recruitment survey is very similar to building a regular survey. Use the Profile action to include profile variables as survey questions wherever you can.

For more information, see:

Step 4: Include End Survey actions to terminate undesirable participants

Participants who successfully complete the recruitment survey are eligible to join your community, and upon completion, automatically receive an email with a request to confirm their membership. Therefore, it's important to eliminate undesirable candidates before they reach the end of the survey.

For more information, see Remove participants from a recruitment survey.

Step 5: Preview your recruitment survey

On the Distribute page, create a recruitment link, and then get the test recruitment link and test the survey logic to ensure it's correct.

When you create the recruitment link, the application automatically creates the confirmation email for the community you specified. You will be reviewing and editing this confirmation email in step 6.

Step 6: Review the confirmation email

Confirmation emails are essential to the recruitment process. The confirmation email is automatically sent to pending members who successfully complete the recruitment survey. Pending members must click the link in the confirmation email to become active community members.

Review the default text of the confirmation email before you distribute the survey, and ensure the messaging is on-brand.

For more information, see Edit a confirmation.

Step 7: Perform a soft launch

Distribute the recruitment links to a subset of your intended audience. Monitor participation and analyze survey data to see if there are any unexpected issues to troubleshoot.

For more information, see Recipient size limits and soft launches.

Step 8: Distribute your survey widely

Distribute recruitment links to the rest of your intended audience. You can email the links on your own server, post them on your social media networks, or share them online.