Smart Recurring

ActBlue user roles and permissions dictate what users can do on our platform. If the tools or features in this article are unavailable to you, speak to your entity Admin first about updating your permissions. 

In this article:
1. Smart Options and Smart Suggestions
2. Using Smart Upsells with Spanish Forms
3. Donor Experience
4. Downloading Smart Recurring Data

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Smart Recurring

We have two Smart Recurring upsells that base the recurring ask amount on the donor’s one-time donation amount: Smart Suggestion and Smart Options. Smart Options is the default upsell for all new contribution forms and will present donors with a pop-up that suggests multiple lower monthly donation amounts, plus the option to set their own amount. The Smart Suggestion tool will present donors with a pop-up with a single data-driven suggestion for a smaller monthly contribution after they’ve given a one-time donation. 

To enable either of these Smart Recurring tools, locate your contribution form via the Contribution Forms tab in your Dashboard toolbar. Then click the “Edit” button next to your form to open the form editor.

Click on the “Recurring settings” tab of your form editor. 

You can find both the Smart Recurring options by clicking the dropdown under “Recurring donations.”

Please note: If you enable Smart Boost in the “Post-donation upsells” tab of the form editor, the recurring pop-up will be disabled, even if you have one of our recurring pop-up tools selected in the “Recurring settings” tab. 

To enable the Smart Suggestion recurring pop-up, select “Unlimited + Smart Suggestion” in the dropdown menu.Smart Options is the default upsell and will already be enabled on new contribution forms.

With the Smart Options tool turned on, one-time donations will process, and your donors will see a pop-up similar to the one below. They will be asked to choose between multiple monthly donation amounts, all of which are slightly smaller than the one-time amount they just gave. The pop-up will also give them the option to set their own monthly donation amount!

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Using Smart Upsell with Spanish Forms

If you choose to translate your form’s standard ActBlue-provided text into Spanish, which we explain how to do here, the default language in a Smart Suggestion or Smart Options recurring pop-up will also be translated into Spanish!

We do not translate user-generated titles and asks, but you can write a custom title or ask in Spanish for your Smart Suggestion or Smart Options recurring pop-up!

Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking on the green “Publish” button at the top of the form editor.

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Donor Experience

If a donor makes a one-time contribution of $210 or more they won’t be asked to make a recurring contribution of any amount on top of their initial contribution, since their one-time amount is on the higher end. You wouldn’t want to ask a donor making a $400 contribution to also commit to a recurring donation.

And if someone does choose to commit to a monthly donation using Smart Recurring, they’ll receive a receipt with the details of the contribution, letting them know that a charge will be processed each month.

They will also see a note indicating that the contribution will recur when viewing their contribution history in their ActBlue Express account.

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Downloading Smart Recurring Data

Smart Recurring will also be noted in report data when you download contribution info from the Downloads tab of your Dashboard toolbar. There will be a column in the spreadsheet specifying whether or not the donor used a Smart Recurring tool. “T” indicates true: The donor used a Smart Suggestion or Smart Options pop-up. Separate columns note the amount of the recurring contribution and the number of months the contribution will recur for.

Your campaign or organization can also see who made a recurring contribution in the detailed contribution list and report of all contributions for each contribution form. You can find these tools by clicking the “Stats” button in the form navigation bar (form navbar) when previewing your form. 

On your form’s Statistics page, click the “View all contributions” button to find the list of detailed contributions or download a report of all contributions.

You can also see who made a recurring donation by searching for a specific contribution in the Contributions Search tab in your Dashboard toolbar.

You’ll see a note that the contribution will recur each month, along with the one-time contribution amount.

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In the “Recurring settings” tab in the form editor, you can also write a custom, static recurring pitch for your contribution form or offer a free gift to supporters who choose to make a monthly donation. You can learn more about our full set of recurring tools here. 

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The amount of support that the ActBlue Customer Service Team can provide is dependent on the permissions that you have. Check with your entity Admin about your assigned role.

If you have any questions, please contact our support team using the email address you use to access your ActBlue account.