Want to know which of your advocates personally know an elected representative? A Relationship action collects that intel directly from advocates and turns it into a searchable map of connections your whole team can act on.
🤝 What Is a Relationship Action?
A Relationship action is a campaign where advocates tell you which representatives they personally know, how they know them, and how strong the connection is. You can also let advocates log meetings they've had with a rep, with your own follow-up questions baked in. A few things to know before you start:
- Advocates are not contacting their lawmakers. This action type logs who your lawmakers know and/or met with, but does not directly contact their elected officials.
To learn more about all our action types, check out this guide.
- You choose what advocates can log. Turn on Relationships, Meetings, or both. Each mode has its own settings you can customize.
- Relationship records are kept up to date automatically. If the same advocate reports the same rep again, their record is updated rather than duplicated.
- Meetings stack up over time. Every meeting an advocate logs is added as a new entry, so you build a running history of contact with each office.
⚙️ Let's Create Your Relationship Action
Make sure you are logged in to your AdvocacyAI account. On the navigation bar, locate the “Targets” section and click on the Relationships tab.
- If it’s your first time setting one up: click the "New Relationship Action" button in the center of the page
- You can also use the blue “+Create” button on the right to select a New Relationship action.
- Name: This is the name of your action. It can be visible to advocates on the advocate hub or on websites, if you embed the action.
- Internal Description: Describe the action for internal use. This will not be visible to your advocates.
- Ada Drafted Content: Toggle this on to have Ada help draft your action's widget copy. When it's on, an Information for AI box appears so you give Ada any specifics you want reflected in the content.
- Start Date: Advocates will not be able to take action before this date.
- End Date: Advocates will not be able to take action after this date. Flip on Ongoing if the action has no end date.
In the Campaign Data card you can add optional data enrichment and tagging (availability depends on your plan):
- Enable VoterMatch? Matches advocate information against the voter file to provide richer demographic data.
- Enable DonorMatch? Enriches advocate data with donor capacity and giving history.
- Set Action Tags: Adding tags to your action will assign those tags to every advocate that takes action on this campaign.
When your details are set, click "Next: Configure Your Relationship" at the bottom.
🔧 Configure Your Relationship Action
In the ”Configure Relationship Action” section, you can choose whether advocates will track relationships or meetings (or both), create relationship types, and include post-meeting follow up questions.
#1 Choose What Advocates Can Log
Use the checkmark next to each option to include it in your campaign. If an option is unchecked, it will not be included.
- Relationships: Advocates tell you which representatives they personally know and what they’re relationship is. You’ll be able to customize relationship types in the next step.
- Meetings: Advocates report meetings they've had with a representative. You have the option to include follow-up questions in the next step to learn more about the meeting.
At least one of these options must be enabled. The rest of the configuration page adapts based on your selections. Relationship Types only appear when Relationships is on, and Meeting Follow-Up Questions only appear when Meetings is on.
#2 Customize the Relationship Types
This option is only visible if your campaign allows the advocate to track relationships. Once the advocate selects a representative, they have to specify what kind of relationship they have. Advocates can select multiple types for a single representative.
To create your own relationship type, click the "Add Type" button
We include a few relationship types to get you started, which you can edit or remove:
- Personal friend
- Family member
- Professional contact
- Former staffer or colleague
- Donor to their campaigns
- Community connection
#3 Set Up Meeting Follow-Up Questions
This option is only visible if your campaign allows the advocate to track meetings. These questions are asked each time an advocate logs a meeting with a representative.
Click "Add Question" to add as many questions as you need. To remove a question or a choice, click the ✕ next to it. Customize your questions with the options below:
- Question Label: the advocate will read the question exactly how you enter it in this field.
- Question Type
- Long text: a free-form text area (great for open-ended questions like "What did you discuss?")
- Short text: a single-line input
- Dropdown: a multiple-choice select. When chosen, an "+ Add choice" link appears so you can define the options
We include three questions to get you started, which you remove or edit to customize your form.
When you are happy with your relationship types and meeting follow-up questions, click the "Next: Launch Action" button at the bottom.
🚀 Launch Your Action
The Launch page is where you write what advocates see and fine-tune the widget experience. A live preview panel on the right updates as you type.
#1 Write Your Widget Copy
- Call to Action: set the header, title, and description that advocates see at the top of the widget form.
- Relationship Intro: customize the copy shown on the relationship form itself, which your advocates will see as they search for their representative. We recommend you use it to explain what you're collecting and why it matters.
- Thank You Page: write the message advocates see after they submit. Tell them what happens next, or just say thanks.
The “Thank You Page” will not be visible if you choose to redirect the advocate to a different site after they submit the form.
#2 Customize the Call to Action (Widget Options)
This section lets you further customize the first page of the widget. The fields you can customize include:
- Address: decide whether your advocates should verify their address from the dropdown menu, or enter it manually.
Note: If VoterMatch is turned on, the address field is required. If you turn it on, you can remove the address field completely or limit it to zip-code only.
- Business Information: collect the advocate’s company name and title.
- Phone Number
- Custom Fields: collect additional information from your advocates using custom fields.
- Opt-in Checkbox: remove the default opt-in message and include your own.
- Display Action Goal: set a target number of actions for this campaign. The action starts at 0 by default, but you can customize the starting number using the field below
#3 Follow-Up Actions
Decide what happens after your advocate takes action. By default, the advocate will view your chosen message on the “Thank You Page”. Customize this further with the options below:
- Follow-Up Actions: Chain multiple actions or donation pages together. After completing this action, advocates will be shown or redirected to the selected actions and donation pages.
- Add URL Redirect: Take your advocate to a different page or site after they take action.
#4 Customize the Advocate Experience
Use the following options to further customize what the advocate can do after they take action:
- Single Action Only?: Ensure that an advocate can only take action once in this campaign.
- Kiosk Mode?: Enable kiosk mode to prevent user data from being auto-loaded from cookies.
When everything looks good in the preview, click "Launch Action" (or "Save & View Action Page" if you've already launched) to make the action live.
📊 Your Relationship Action Dashboard
Once advocates start submitting, your action dashboard shows:
- Completions: total advocates who submitted the action
- Relationships: total advocate-to-representative relationship records logged through this action
- Meetings: total meetings reported
The By Representative table breaks down each rep's relationship count, how many of those are marked "strong," and how many meetings have been logged for that office. Click a rep's name to open their target profile.
The Logged Meetings table (visible when Meetings is enabled) lists every reported meeting. Click "Details" to see the advocate's answers to your follow-up questions.
👥 What Will The Advocate Experience Be?
Once your advocate enters their information on the form, they’ll can search for the name of the target to log a relationship and/or track a meeting with them.
They’ll pick a relationship type, choose it’s strength (strong, moderate, or weak) and leave an optional note.
To log a meeting, they can select the “I met with them” box to give you more details about the meeting. They’ll choose the date of the meeting, answer the questions you’ve set up, and have the option to include more notes.
❓ FAQs
What representatives can advocates log relationships against?
Advocates see the representatives in your account's federal and/or state target list.
What happens if the same advocate submits the action twice?
- If an advocate logs a new relationship with the same lawmaker, the platform will update that entry (nothing is duplicated).
- A new meeting submission adds a new meeting entry with its corresponding date.
Can I add or remove relationship types after the action is live?
Yes! Go back to the Configure step at any time to edit, add, or remove types. Existing responses are not affected.
Can I add meeting questions after the action is live?
Yes! Open the action, go to Configure, and add questions. New questions will appear for any advocate who submits after that point; earlier meeting logs won't have answers to the new questions.
Where does the relationship data go after advocates submit?
Relationship data gets tracked in both the advocate and target profiles. Each profile has a dedicated section where you can see the relationships logged.
To view this on an account level, locate the “Targets” section and click on the Relationships tab. You can filter, export, and use this data for targeted outreach.
➡️ What's Next?
Your action is set up! To share it with your advocates, you can:
- Create a Landing Page: use the “edit page” button to customize your AdvocacyAI landing page. Learn more about landing pages here.
- Embed the form in your website (i-frame): Scroll to the bottom of your action dashboard to copy your widget embed code
👋 Need More Help?
Reach out to us at help@advocacyai.com and we'll get you back on track!