How do you determine the ladder criteria for a local group?

Action Network “ladders” are a way of getting new members who join the national group and have entered a post code, into a local group if the members postcode matches certain criteria. There are three ways to determine those criteria:

1. By postcode,
2. By postcode radius, and
3. A combination of 1 and 2.

What are postcodes?

By postcode

If you create a ladder that uses specific postcodes, anyone who lives in that postcode will be joined to that local group.

For example, a “Waimate” ladder with just the postcode 7980 would only sign up people living in the yellow area.

By postcode radius

You can create a ladder that signs anyone up who lives in a postcode that touches the radius of a specific postcode.

For example, a 40 km radius of postcode 7980 will catch the following postcodes:

The bright yellow is the radius. The darker yellow are the postcodes that touch the radius. Anyone who lives in the bright or dark yellow postcodes would join this group.

You can only create the following radius sizes:

Combination

A ladder can include any number of specific postcodes and any number of radiuses from postcodes.

Pros and cons

Postcode

• Pros:
  • accurate
  • quick for small areas
• Cons:
  • ladders with large areas with a lot of postcodes take a while to make
  • some postcodes overlap with other districts

Radius of a postcode

• Pros:
  • quick to make for large areas
  • good for cities that don’t have other XR groups around
• Cons:
  • not specific, can miss some postcodes, requiring multiple radiuses in some circumstances
  • not good for cities close to other XR groups (can end up covering the same postcodes)
  • the radius are set at 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 miles.