Custom targeting is SparkInfluence’s answer to the question: “What if I want to target elected officials who are NOT federal or state representatives, or who aren’t even elected officials?” It’s easy to set up custom targets for local governing bodies, like school boards or city councils, or individuals like a county commissioner or your state Medicaid director. Anyone you want your stakeholders to influence can be easily added to the system and set as the recipient(s) of your actions.

Custom targets are any legislators that are not already part of the SparkInfluence system OR any non-legislators that you want to target for your stakeholders to influence or direct action toward. Custom targets could be a local school board or city council, your county commissioner, or even members of the press that you want your stakeholders to contact. Click into the Custom Targets area of the platform from the Actions main nav dropdown.

Click to create and you’ll be prompted to enter the target’s contact information.

Any custom targets you’ve created will be available to use as recipients when creating a write, tweet or call action. Of course, for each, you’ll need either or all of an email, a phone number and a twitter handle for the custom target to be sure messaging reaches them.

Custom Targets are a great way to reach those decision makers who may not be in the system. As soon as a new custom target is created they’re available to be used as a recipient for calls to action, and reporting screens  for custom targets are immediately generated in the background.