Georgia State Election Board — Mailchimp Form Support Call

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I'm gonna send you that right now. So I'm gonna. Go ahead, I'm replying to the email you just sent and there's gonna be a Google Meet link in my reply. So. Yeah, go ahead and hop, go ahead and hop into there and let's, let's look at this really quick.

State Election Board: Cool.

Chris LaFay: I'll talk to you over there. Alexa video. Call it.

State Election Board: Hey.

Chris LaFay: Hi. Hello. There we go. Oh,.

State Election Board: Okay. So I'm going to share my screen with you, right? How can I share my screen with you?

Chris LaFay: So click on, on the, on the very bottom bar of Google Meet, there is a rectangle with an up arrow right in the middle. And that is Share screen. And it works pretty much the same as Microsoft Teams and Zoom does at that point. Perfect. Okay,.

State Election Board: So are you able to see when my arrow's moving around?

Chris LaFay: Let's hear. I don't see your arrow moving around, but I do see mailchimp though. Oh, there we go. I think.

State Election Board: So let me go back. So I have forms and then I have other forms.

Chris LaFay: So which is the form that you're looking to?

State Election Board: The other forms is this one. This was the official sign up. This was like a landing page.

Chris LaFay: Okay, go click on the little down arrow on the far right of that one next to View Report.

State Election Board: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Oh, and there's actually. Go back. Go back a page. Okay, there was a draw. There was a down arrow next to that View Report button.

State Election Board: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, click on that.

State Election Board: View landing page.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, go and click on View landing page. That's fine. Now I think that may have opened up another tab and I think you're only sharing the, the single tab rather than your, your screen. So I can't see, see anything now.

State Election Board: Yeah, I'm not able, I'm not able to see it either.

Chris LaFay: Oh, are you seeing a black screen with like a little paper, like a little clock icon?

State Election Board: Huh? Oh, so that's all I'm seeing, which is kind of weird. So let me do.

Chris LaFay: This is the whole, so the, the form here, the whole point is to get somebody to type in their email address and have it add them to a list. Correct?

State Election Board: Right. This is kind of, this is what it looks like, but it doesn't show what it looks like. Let me see if I can had it pulled up over here.

Chris LaFay: Go over to this up and put it right here.

State Election Board: This is what it pops up and says.

Chris LaFay: I don't see that pop up. I think when you shared your screen, you actually only shared a single tab within your browser.

State Election Board: Let me see if I can fix that.

Chris LaFay: In the same place where you click Share, there's a button that'll say stop presenting,.

State Election Board: So share this tab instead.

Chris LaFay: You can also click that too. Yeah. Okay, here we go. So I see the seal. I see a big old seal now.

State Election Board: Yeah, it's not very pretty. And also we also have their name on there. So. Okay, but this is. But what it looks like in Facebook is. I guess maybe you can kind of see what it looks like in Facebook. That help.

Chris LaFay: Let's do. Let's actually do this. Go ahead and share the other tab that you were on, the one that had the. The mailchimp back end where we were looking at the forms. Go ahead and switch back over there. Click on. On the left hand side, click on audience kind of in the middle below. There you go. Let me actually, before we do that, actually let me. Give me one second. Underneath the left hand sidebar where you just clicked on Audience. Scroll down a little bit for me. Stay within audience. We'll just scroll a little bit. That's not. That's not right. Okay, let's see here. I'm not as familiar with mailchimp as I am other things, so give me one second. Yes. Yes. Aha. Okay, click on forms for me on the left hand side.

State Election Board: Okay,.

Chris LaFay: There we go. Click on other forms and scroll down on this one a little bit for on the right hand side. So this one's. The first one's a landing page. The next one is embedded. What is the. Say that again.

State Election Board: That's the one that I sent you. Embedded.

Chris LaFay: Interesting. Okay, click the down. So next to the view button. Click the down arrow on that one. Okay. You can close out of that. Go ahead and click on the blue text. Yeah, the Georgia. Say I click on that right there.

State Election Board: So I'll show you what looks like. So this is what the form will look like.

Chris LaFay: Yes, correct.

State Election Board: And then I go over to here to continue and it says copy and paste this code into your website where you want the form to appear.

Chris LaFay: Keep scrolling down on this page. Not within the code box, but just on the page. Is there any more to scroll down?

State Election Board: Only in the code box.

Chris LaFay: That's weird.

State Election Board: Yeah, there's nothing as you can see on this side to be able to scroll down. And even when I down arrow, I don't get anything.

Chris LaFay: Okay, go back to edit for me on the top left hand corner. On that left hand sidebar where there's those four options, form, field, set. Actually go to Settings. Okay. With. Don't care about that. You can scroll. Yeah, I keep on scrolling down There. Disable. No, no, No, I don't think I want any of that. Okay, you can go back to the page that listed all the forms now. So go back again and that'll give us. That should get us back to the main list. Go ahead and say create a new form in the top right hand corner. All right, so what are the options here? We have an embedded form sign up, landing page, pop up form that could be added to that site. This is really odd. Nor. So normally with a lot of systems and tools, you actually create the form within the tool like mailchimp and then there's like two or three lines of code that basically have like a, like a form ID inside of it. And it'll go to Mailchimp and it'll say get me form ID 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And then it'll bring back all that code that you email to Don. It'll bring back all that code dynamically and shove it into the website. The problem with the code that you sent over and what mailchimp is giving us is it's the entire code. So like let's say you wanted to make a change to that form, you couldn't make it in mailchimp, you'd have to go onto your website and edit the code. And that doesn't make sense. And that's not how most of these systems work because they know people aren't going to do that. So the fact that their only options. So these are the options that you have, right?

State Election Board: Yes sir.

Chris LaFay: With mailchimp, you have two. One option is we can use what you sent over to us. We can copy and paste it. It'll place it on the website. It's done very much not editable by you guys. Okay, option one, I hate that option. Option two is the landing page route. So on your website there will be a button that says join our mailing list.

State Election Board: Right?

Chris LaFay: It'll open up a new tab and it'll look like a regular old Mailchimp form on Mailchimp.com or whatever domain name it is that has all your stuff on it. That what you actually, what you showed me a little a few minutes ago where like the, the seal took up most of the screen. You're like, this is ugly. But the forms are right. That is option two. Option three, if you actually, on the screen that you're looking at now, if you scroll down to the bottom form type, it says pop up. Let's actually, let's actually test this really quick. Go ahead and say, go ahead and click create A pop up form. I want to make sure that I'm not lying to you because they apparently do things weird here. What would you like to offer? Oh,.

State Election Board: Maybe we. No, that's a.

Chris LaFay: It's not this, it's. This is a different. The, the intention behind this is not the correct intention.

State Election Board: This is like a market. It's like more marketing.

Chris LaFay: Bingo. Exact. It's like an exit. Like, you know, like those sites that you go and like you move your mouse up to the top of the screen and a popup comes up and it's like, hey, before you leave.

State Election Board: Right.

Chris LaFay: Get. That's what this kind of thing is. So this is actually not an option. So you have two options?

State Election Board: Yeah. All these templates and I couldn't see anything that did that. Yeah, yeah.

Chris LaFay: Okay, so you have two options. One is we copy and paste the code as you sent it. It'll be on your website. Bada bing, bada boom. Option two is we link externally to that form, the one that you sent. Just resize the. The seal so it's not as humongous, so it doesn't look as. As funky. Those are your two options. They're not great options, but those are the two you got.

State Election Board: Okay, so let me ask you about the embedded form. Would that embedded form just be on the website?

Chris LaFay: It would. You just would not be able to edit it in mailchimp.

State Election Board: Right. But I mean it would just be like an embedded form where it would look just like the form.

Chris LaFay: It would look like it will. Let me see.

State Election Board: I'm sorry, I'm just trying to imagine what it's going to look like on the website, what the difference would look like. You know I'm saying embedded form versus.

Chris LaFay: Yes. Hold on one second. I'm gonna see. Good gosh, this is so much code. Let me. Do I have your. Do I have the credentials pulled up? Nope. Georgia scp.

State Election Board: There it is.

Chris LaFay: Hey, look at that. All right, let's see. We're going to do.

State Election Board: Let me quit sharing and you're g. To share.

Chris LaFay: I'm about to. Yeah. Once I get this. Is this Google Chrome? This is Chrome.

State Election Board: Great.

Chris LaFay: Fantastic. Let's do this. I'm going to go back over here to Google Meet and I'm going to remove your presentation and then I'm going to share this. Okay.

State Election Board: Hey, can you hold on two seconds for me? I'm so sorry. I've been waiting for this phone call. I'm so sorry. Hang on a second. Hey, Samantha, I'm doing great. How are you doing playing telephone time here So I wanted to. I wanted to run this by you because we're at a point now that we need to see if we can work through this. They are actually the executive director and the deputy director has asked if we can request a partial credit and place another order. If not, we'll just return the badges and find another source. They're just really not happy with the whole process. And we knew there'd be a problem with the lettering and so forth. So we're trying to reach. I'm trying to reach a happy medium that we can use y' all and continue to use y' all and just see if we can come up with a solution that we could possibly use a credit towards another order that we'll place immediately and just. We can redesign it. Yes, ma'. Am. Yes, ma'. Am. Is that possible? Okay. Yeah. I'm just like, no, I love Samantha. I don't want to end this thing. So I'm. I'm like, I've. I just wanted to see if we can work out something and. And then we'll get more intentional about. The thing is, we've had a lot of changes too, but intentional about the layout. I know there was an issue with how the layout was and how it was looking, and we discussed that prior, but we need to nail down of how we can come up with a real solution for this. And I'm going to send you another picture of another old name badge. And maybe this is something that y' all can work better with with how Yalls layouts are. Because I know that that was an issue that how the layouts were wasn't able to really accommodate much change, even though y' all did make some adjustments. And I appreciate that. Okay. Can we return those? No, ma'. Am. And we'll be glad to return those. Okay. Okay. Okay, perfect. So how much would the credit be? Okay. And then I'll get those sent to you and send you a tracking number once I have that. It's okay. It's okay. Just. We can talk about that later. Yes, ma'. Am. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Samantha, thank you so much for your help. I appreciate you always. Yes, ma'. Am. Me too. Thank you so much. Talk soon. You too. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Okay. Sorry about that.

Chris LaFay: No worries.

State Election Board: Okay,.

Chris LaFay: So that is what this will look like right here. And the downside is just you won't be able to edit it. Now what you would be able to do then.

State Election Board: What am I looking at? This one, the newspaper sign up is this embedded form.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, this is. This is the code that you sent over right here.

State Election Board: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So it would, it would be, it would, it would live somewhere. It would look, it would look, it looks exactly like this. And so the downside is if you ever needed to change it, what you would have to do is you'd have to go back and get a new version of that code and then there's going to be. There's basically a block that, that, that's going to be on your site called custom HTML and you can literally copy and paste the whole, the whole thing code.

State Election Board: Like we did right there. Okay, like, like you just did.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, exactly. So like this.

State Election Board: How do you feel like, how do you feel like that looks. Would look? Is that.

Chris LaFay: Oh, I think that's, I mean, I think that's, that is pretty much exactly what I would have expected. Embedded forms typically look a little bit different than the rest of the site just because you can't control all of the code and you definitely don't want to edit that code. So it looks a little bit different than the rest of the site, but in reality it's fine.

State Election Board: And what would it look like with a pop up form?

Chris LaFay: So that pop up form is the one that we looked at. That third option is all about.

State Election Board: Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry, not the platform, but the one that. The landing page. I'm sorry, the landing page. What would that look like?

Chris LaFay: So the. It would, it would look exactly like what you had. So it's a URL that's on mailchimp.com or mailchimp us or whatever it is. And we would just have a button on the site. And so rather than having this form that's here, there would be a button that goes underneath. Honestly, wherever. It could be a link in the navigation bar, it could be a link down here, doesn't matter. And it would just open that exact page that you sent over earlier. Or not that you sent over, but you showed me.

State Election Board: Okay. And can you give me a screenshot of that so I can just let talk to Hope and see if she wants it to have like the bigger thing or just like a URL link. And we can name that link anything we want to, right?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, like you can put anything like, for, for text links and buttons and things like that. Those things in general can all be changed. So yes, you can make the, the button that at least it would say.

State Election Board: It would would say mailchimp on there.

Chris LaFay: It probably wouldn't say. You mean the button would say mailchimp?

State Election Board: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: No, the button could say whatever you want it to if you're going to go the separate page where you're actually linking over to a form that's hosted by mailchimp, the button on the site can say, you know, sign up for our newsletter, and that will then open into mailchimp. But the button does not have to say mailchimp though, right?

State Election Board: Right. Yeah. Well, I can just do a screenshot. I don't know why I'm asking. Do it.

Chris LaFay: And I did. I did just take a screenshot. But yeah, if you took one, then go for it.

State Election Board: Well, I haven't yet. I'll see if I can do it.

Chris LaFay: Okay.

State Election Board: No, I can't do it. If you can do it for me, that'd be great.

Chris LaFay: Gladly.

State Election Board: You're the bestest.

Chris LaFay: Sent. Oop. Not sent. Election mailchimp embed code. Here we go. I'm going to add dawn back onto this thread. Desktop. Look like on. And that is attached. There we go. That screenshot is currently in your inbox right now.

State Election Board: You're perfect. Okay, let me just clarify on that and then if I send you this, I'm gonna have to redo anyways because it only asks for the email address, not the name.

Chris LaFay: It does. It asks for the name down here.

State Election Board: No, I'm talking about the. The landing page.

Chris LaFay: Yes. So yeah. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

State Election Board: Yeah. So I'll have to change a new landing page you can just edit.

Chris LaFay: More than likely you can just edit the one that you have right now and then just add that field. You wouldn't have to create something new.

State Election Board: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Because the landing pages are hosted on mailchimp. So if you make a change on the landing page, and that's the route that you want to go. The nice thing about it is that if you make a change to the landing page, you don't have to touch your website at all.

State Election Board: Sure. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Because that link will stay the same. So whatever that page's URL is. Mailchimp.com this is not correct. But Georgia State Election Board SL form ID12345 that URL is the same. So if you go and edit it, you add a field, you make a layout change, you update the icon, whatever it is, that URL stays the same. So your website stays functioning.

State Election Board: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Whereas the way that we have this one we just looked at, given the way mailchimp does embeds, which is not a normal way to do it is they give you the whole code top to bottom, and it's completely self hosted. So if you make a change in mailchimp and it does not reflect sure. So the pros and cons of that are, you know, at least with it being directly on your website, people don't have to click off to a different website to put their information in. So it's. There's less friction there. But the trade off is editability.

State Election Board: Right, Right.

Chris LaFay: So it just depends on what you guys deem as more important. There is not a right answer. It's just whatever you deem as important.

State Election Board: Yeah, I think about a lot of the people who visit this are old people and trying to keep things simple for them, you know, might be easy just to like the form to be there. We might have more sign up. People may have to. Because you may not have to look around the whole thing to find, you know what I'm saying? It might be more visible. So I, I don't really know, but let me just check with her and double check. There's pros and cons. So let's talk. We'll talk through it and then I will, I will give you a call or send you a message and let you know which one we're going with.

Chris LaFay: That all sounds good. When do you think that you'll know that Vi as well as the remaining blog post as well?

State Election Board: By the end of the day.

Chris LaFay: In the day.

State Election Board: Yes, we're working on the blogs right now.

Chris LaFay: Awesome. That all sounds tweaked up.

State Election Board: Yes. As we speak, we've been. I've been seeing emails going back and forth, so we're. We're getting those tweaked.

Chris LaFay: So love it.

State Election Board: Along with a lot of other problems. Oh, my days. Have you ever seen the movie 24 hours?

Chris LaFay: Wait, wait, the. The movie or the TV show?

State Election Board: The TV show.

Chris LaFay: TV show 100 every season. Watched it live as it was coming out.

State Election Board: That explains the political world. I just want to tell you is that it's so weird because I've never watched the show and me and my husband were looking for series to watch and I just happened to see that one and because it popped up as like top whatever. So we watched one episode and I was like, oh, my days. I live that every day. You never know who to trust. You never know who's who. They would say they are and it's just like, like you're crazy. So, yeah, so I just wanted to throw that out there. Already watched it. You know, you kind of know. It's kind of scary.

Chris LaFay: It's. It is. Yeah, they did. I mean, I don't know how well it's aged because I definitely watched it when I was like in middle School or high school? I don't remember the specific age range. It's, it's, it's been out for a minute. It's been out for a while now.

State Election Board: Keeper Sutherland, right?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, yeah. Keeper Sutherland amongst a couple of others. When was it? Let's hear 24.

State Election Board: That's kind of scary that it's that old and it's like we're seeing that fruition of it.

Chris LaFay: 24 Premiered in 2001. Dang. And went through 2010. So I didn't start watching in 2001. I would have been, I would have been a little too young in 2001 to watch it. But I definitely, I definitely have seen all of them.

State Election Board: We're in season six, but I'm. But I mean, some things are kind of stretched, but then some things are just kind of like. We see that now. So that's kind of.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

State Election Board: Scarry.

Chris LaFay: It is. It's nuts. That show was crazy, man.

State Election Board: It's like. It's like the people that you would never suspect and they just seem to be so it's like, oh, my days. But, yeah. But anyways, that's for another day, another time. You know how to pray for us, don't you, Chris?

Chris LaFay: Say again?

State Election Board: I said, you know how to pray for us now, don't you?

Chris LaFay: Exactly. Yes, exactly. I, I'm now going to go down a rabbit trail of looking at old 24 things. So. Thank you. What, what did happen to Tony Almeida? I forgot.

State Election Board: Hey, listen, Trump's given a thing about the voting tonight. He's given a. A live. I don't know what time it starts. I gotta figure that out too. But he's supposedly about the elections, about honing down on the election fraud and it's gonna, it's gonna be. Supposed to be pretty good, so.

Chris LaFay: Interesting. Okay, good to know.

State Election Board: Yeah, just kind of check that out. I'm sure it'll be known everywhere with Trump involved. But, but he's. He said he's gonna like put the hammer down. He's gonna personally get involved. So this is gonna be interesting.

Chris LaFay: Yeah. I can only imagine this is why I do not work in government, amongst multiple of other reasons why. But this is one of the reasons why I do not have any desire to be in the system. I will be outside the system and then help, you know, within it, but actually be living in the day to day of it. Yeah, I, I could. I could not. I could not.

State Election Board: Yeah. And I'd rather stay close to the ground. I like to help everybody, but being the ones who are hitting, getting hit. It's rough with them, but I'm so excited to get all this done with and I'm gonna. I know it's three o', clock, so I'm gonna get with her and try to get this, this ironed out. And she has sent me over a couple blog ideas, so we're gonna hash through those with my ideas and so we'll get them to you. Now you have, you're working with. Do you have just foia?

Chris LaFay: Yes, that link got sent over a couple of days ago. We have that, we have that link now.

State Election Board: And so then cmts, you're working with them.

Chris LaFay: And I just replied to that email. They asked me, they didn't actually give me anything specific. They were like, there's three options. Which one do you want? And I was like, I don't know what the options are. But I went ahead and told them in general what I was looking for. So they should be able to give us whatever.

State Election Board: Okay, then we can resolve this mailchimp. Then you'll have all the links that you need.

Chris LaFay: So I believe, I believe so. Those, those were the ones. Yes.

State Election Board: And then we get the blog.

Chris LaFay: You have all of the.

State Election Board: So we have the blog mailchimp form, open records and complaint form link. And then I've sent you the election calendar menu link.

Chris LaFay: Yep, exactly.

State Election Board: So, yep, we're, we are kicking it off.

Chris LaFay: Wonderful.

State Election Board: Thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate you.

Chris LaFay: Not a problem at all. I hope you have a good rest of the day.

State Election Board: You too. Thank you.

Chris LaFay: Take care. Bye.

State Election Board: Thank you. Bye. Bye.