How to Set Up Your First Door-Knocking Campaign in Beacon
To start a canvassing campaign in Beacon, create your organization, create the campaign, draw your turf, add your contacts, write the script and decide how answers are recorded, invite your canvassers and assign them turf. Then set the campaign to Active for the first shift, review the results, and export what you need. This guide walks through those screens in order, using the labels you will see in the app.
Make your plan before you open the app. Your goal, the households you will visit, the size of each turf and the schedule should already be decided, and our guide to planning and running a canvassing campaign covers each of those decisions. With the plan on paper, the setup below follows it step by step.
The words Beacon uses
Beacon adjusts a few words to the organization type you choose when you sign up. A political campaign sees Canvassers, Voters, Territories and Walk List. A door-to-door sales organization sees Reps, Leads, Zones and Visit List. A nonprofit sees Volunteers, Contacts, Regions and Outreach List. This guide uses the campaign words. The screens and the steps are the same for every type.
Step 1: Create your organization and learn the roles
On the sign-up page, enter your name, work email and the name of your organization, and choose an Organization type: Political campaign, Door-to-door sales, Nonprofit or Other. A real estate team or a church should choose Other. The 14-day trial includes the Starter plan's features and needs no card.
One organization can hold several campaigns, so create one organization for the whole effort and a separate campaign for each push. Everyone in the organization has one of four roles:
- Owner: the person who created the organization.
- Admin: manages the team, billing, settings and data exports.
- Manager: runs campaigns, territories, scripts, reports and live tracking.
- Canvasser: knocks on doors, using the campaigns and walk lists assigned to them.
Step 2: Create the campaign
Open Campaigns in the sidebar. You will see two buttons. Setup Wizard walks through five steps (Basics, Contacts, Territories, Team and Launch), and New Campaign opens a single form with the same fields. Either one works. The wizard suits a first campaign because it keeps the steps in order.
Fill in the basics:
- Campaign Name and Description. Use a name your team will recognize on a phone screen, such as "North Side, Fall Door Knock".
- Type. Choose Door Knock for a standard canvass. Choose Literature Drop for a day when canvassers leave a printed piece at each door without knocking.
- Status. Leave it at Draft while you set up. Canvassers see only campaigns marked Active, so a draft stays out of their way until launch day.
- Start Date and End Date.
- Door Goal and Contact Goal. Enter the door knocks and conversations from your field plan. They give you something to measure against after each shift.
Step 3: Draw your turf
Open Territories and click New Territory. In the Create Territory window, give the turf a Name and a Color, and add a Description if you like.
Under Draw Boundary, use the search box to find your area on the map. Click the polygon tool at the top left of the map, click points around the streets you want, and double-click to finish. Then click Create Territory. To reshape a boundary later, select the territory, click Edit, and use Edit Shape.
Size each territory to one shift for one canvasser, using the doors per shift from your plan. Our guide to turf cutting covers sizing and boundaries in more detail.
If you are using the wizard, the Territories step has its own New Territory button. Select every territory the campaign covers. As the wizard explains, contacts within those boundaries will appear on canvassers' walk lists.
Step 4: Add your contacts
Your contacts are the households and people in your universe, and they live on the Contacts page. Add your contacts to Beacon before the first shift.
In the wizard, the Contacts step lets you add contacts to the campaign directly. You can also skip that step and rely on the contacts inside the campaign's territories.
When your contacts are in, open Territories and click a territory. The panel shows its Contacts, Contacted and Assigned counts. Check that each territory holds roughly the number of doors you planned for one shift, and adjust any boundary that is far off.
Step 5: Write the script and plan the answers
Script. The campaign form has a Script box. Type your script there, or choose a saved one from Load from Script Library, which lists the scripts kept on the Scripts page. Canvassers see the script in a Campaign Script panel on the door screen, which they can open and close at each door. Keep it short enough to read in a few seconds.
Answers. Decide the two or three questions canvassers will ask at every door, each tied to your goal, and put them in the script. Then agree on where each answer goes on the door screen. The result button records what happened at the door. The Rating from 1 to 5 suits a support or interest score, so agree on what a 1 and a 5 mean. Notes hold anything else, such as the voter's top issue or the best time to call back, so give canvassers a few set words to use, such as "yard sign" or "call after 6".
When every canvasser records answers the same way, the results are easy to count. Before launch, open a test door and confirm that the script appears for this campaign.
Step 6: Invite your canvassers
Admins and owners will find Team in the sidebar. On the Team Members page, click Invite Member. Enter the person's Email, and their First Name and Last Name if you like, choose a Role and click Send Invite. Invitations waiting for an answer are listed under Invited (pending).
Give most people the Canvasser role and your shift leads the Manager role. Every Beacon plan includes unlimited canvassers, so adding volunteers or reps does not change the price.
Step 7: Assign turf
There are two places to assign people.
- On the campaign. In the wizard's Team step, or on the campaign form, select the canvassers and managers who will work on this campaign. The campaign then appears in their list, and their walk lists come from its assigned territories.
- On each territory. Open Territories, click a territory and click Edit. In the Edit Territory panel, use Assign Team Members to choose who works that turf, then click Save Changes.
When someone cancels on the morning of a shift, reassign their territory to whoever arrived in their place.
Step 8: Run the first shift
On launch day, open the campaign and change its Status to Active. Then ask one canvasser to sign in on a phone and confirm that the campaign appears.
The canvasser's steps are short. On the Select Campaign screen, they tap the campaign and Beacon downloads their walk list, with the stops ordered by distance. At each door, the door screen offers the result buttons (Contacted, Not Home, Refused, Moved, Deceased, Inaccessible, Come Back and Left Literature), a Rating from 1 to 5, Notes and the script panel. The button at the bottom of the screen reads Log followed by the chosen result, and tapping it saves the door.
If a canvasser loses signal partway through the shift, their results are queued and sent when the signal returns. Every plan shows a geofence warning on the canvasser's own phone when they walk outside their turf. On Growth and higher plans, the Live Tracking page shows canvassers on a map, for those who have turned on Share my live location.
A short practice session before the shift helps new people use the door screen with confidence. Our guide to training new canvassers in their first week has an outline.
Step 9: Check the leaderboard and results
Beacon records each door result as an interaction, so that is the word you will see on the results screens.
- Dashboard: cards for Total Interactions, Unique Contacts, Contact Rate and Active Campaigns, and a Top Canvassers leaderboard.
- The campaign page: a Stats tab with totals, Daily Activity and a breakdown of door results, an Interactions tab listing each door result, and a Contacts tab.
- Territories: each territory's stats include a Complete percentage, so you can see which turf is finished.
Beacon also offers heat views of the results. Review the results after every shift and compare them with the Door Goal and Contact Goal you entered in Step 2.
Step 10: Export your results
Admins can open Data & Integrations and use the Exports tab. Export Contacts downloads every contact with status and address, and Export Interactions downloads the door results with notes. Each is a CSV file. For a printable summary, managers can open Reports, choose Generate PDF and pick a campaign.
When the campaign is over, set its status to Completed and keep it. The door history is the starting point for your next campaign.
Help with setup
If you would rather have the setup done for you, White Glove setup is $299 flat. More on how Beacon supports a campaign field program is on our political campaigns page.
Set up your first campaign
Create the campaign, draw two or three turfs and invite one canvasser to test the door screen before your launch. Start a 14-day trial on the Starter plan's features, with no card needed.
