EAdvocacy Strategy

E-Advocacy Campaign Strategy - Arnold Chandler

Framing the Issue

Developing goals and timelines

Planning compelling messaging

Action Alerts, E-newsletters, FB Twitter to urge people to take action

Framework

Growing audience

1. Building e-mail list, powerful tools – vertical response, constant contact, mailchimp. Having a website designed to build e-mail list. Sign up option on every website page. If you have multiple campaigns, people come to your site through diff pages – core list building best practice.
2. FB has a habit of changing things without warning. Hard to make process modifications. Use FB as a e-mail building tool – have them sign up to a list on the FB.
3. Search engine optimization

Building relationship

1. Pace, frequency of communication, e-newsletter.
2. Vital statistic of the e-list. Unsubscribe rate. How are you doing with the fragile relationships?
3. Constant Contact – inflates click ratio
4. For e-newsletters, once/monthly is a good frequency. Weekly newsletters are not optimal – unsubscribe rates usually go up.

Getting action

1. Build a predictable arc of engagement. Consistently set expectations.
2. Set expectation of a key milestone
3. Update on the milestones – build engagement , investment
4. Thanks for taking action (and tell them how their action impacted). Declare success, no matter what.

Online petitions are important for list-building tool – you want people to sign up to get your e-mail, petitions.

Online template: 3 templates with button language

1. Action Alert (Take Action)
2. E-newsletter
3. Fundraising (Donate)

How to do a call in action – timeline. 8, 6, 4 and 2 weeks (Arnold to send ppt)

Putting a call to action in an e-newsletter is not the best practice. Best to do it as a stand alone Action Alert.

Cross-client incompatibility: Mail chimp has a lot of good analytics and features, ad work well across different browsers.

If an org is working on multiple campaigns simultaneously, need to inform the audience (coherent framework of advocacy ) , so mailing list is not confused with successive e-mails discussing/urging action on different issues.

General timeline of a campaign 3 months

M + R Strategic: 2012 eNonProfit Benchmark Study report. http://www.mrss.com/

On your website, do not ever make people sign-up just so they can download content you want them to read. Place a “Subscribe” box for e-mail on every page, but do not coerce people to sign up.

Good e- campaigns – Ella Baker, Greenlining, MoveOn, Rainforest Action Network

AB testing is essential to find out what works for your audience. Test to find the best time for click rates. Although generally Tuesday am generally works better for click rates, each audience has its own unique characteristics.