What is mapping?
There is a disconnect between how an organization might view its members, and how people view themselves.
In a large community like an alumni community, a person might be uniquely identified by an ID on a database - but people don't see themselves as numbers. They have names, faces, emails, and phone numbers.
Creating a connection between how people identify themselves and how an organization does is mapping.
How does it work on Almabase?
On the Almabase ecosystem, we try to bridge that gap by trying our best to identify members of your community by looking up their details on your database and mapping them whenever they interact with your events, forms, pages, directories, and payment pages.
Auto-mapping
Whenever somebody submits a form, registers for an event, or makes a gift, we look up the email that has been submitted, and cross-reference that with your database to accurately report on who in your community is engaging with your programs.
Additionally, if a person is logged in while they engage with you, the system uses that to identify them as members of your community.
Manual mapping
If you have uploaded your entire database onto Almabase, the system should be able to automatically identify members of your community most of the time.
But every now and then, it will need your help. Especially when a new email has been used by somebody that does not yet exist in your database. The good news is that this could be a new member that wants to join your community or an existing member who has used an email that was not available to you previously.
Whenever an activity is successfully mapped, you will notice that it looks like this:
If manual mapping is required, it should look like this:
When you click the red Unmapped button, you will see a list of recommended people from your database with a similar name to the one who engaged with your campaign.
If a touchpoint (form submission, event registration, etc.) is unmapped, then you can choose or create a record to map it to. There could be some touchpoints that are not relevant to be mapped, then you can choose to ignore them.
Why is mapping important?
Engagement that has been successfully mapped comes in handy.
Accurate engagement reporting:
It helps you analyze which of your programs has worked for which segments of your community. It will help you design better programs for your community.
Mapping is what connects ‘engagement’ to the ‘person’. So, it’s imperative for any measurement of how well your programs are doing, what is working, and who is engaging with you.
Enriching your database: It helps you find new emails captured through the programs, and push them to the mapped record. This will enable you to enrich your database with contactable and the latest details of the constituents.
Seamless data movement between different systems: It helps the system find the unique identifier that your master database (Salesforce, Raiser's Edge, Ellucian, etc.) is using. This makes sure that whenever data like new event registration, new payments, or new emails are captured, they are recorded on your database with precision.
Take a look at the Data Roadblocks Dashboard designed to help you map activities across different programs on the platform and remove any roadblocks for the seamless movement of data.
Reach out to us at help@almabase.com in case of any queries.