2009 eCampaigning Review: Practices Survey and Action Comparison
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This document summarizes an e-action review and practices survey of 84 online campaigns run by various organizations in July/August 2009. It finds that while most organizations offer easy-to-use actions, there are weaknesses in providing background information and follow-up communications to build supporter relationships. The survey of 45 organizations finds that email is central to successful online campaigning but targeting and tailoring messages for supporters remains a challenge. The document provides recommendations to benchmark organizations' e-actions and focus on improving the overall user experience including thank you messages.
2009 eCampaigning Review: Practices Survey and Action Comparison
- 1. E-action Review and Practices Survey www.advocacyonline.net www.fairsay.com Jess Day linkedin.com/in/jessday Version 1.1
- 2. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 2 E-action comparison Summary Most organisations are offering actions which are easy-to-use, well presented and easy to find. The trend seems to be towards straightforward actions to specific targets, with fewer complicated rich media interfaces. We see more problems when looking at the action in the context of a supporter’s relationship with the organisation – weak or disjointed background info, thank you pages and emails which waste the opportunity to build a relationship. online actions were defined as web content which calls on the reader to do something specific, using their computer, to further a political cause
- 3. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 3 What is the e-action comparison? Definition A snapshot of online campaigning (UK, Canada, International). 84 online actions carried out during July/August 2009, reviewed against a specific set of criteria. It looked at some points of fact - eg type of action, target etc, and some subjective assessments, eg easy to find, relevant to campaign etc. • Easy to find • Quality • Content • Background • Ease of use • Opt in • Thank you page • Thank you email • Follow up
- 4. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 4 What it isn’t • Confidential • A list of the top e-actions • An assessment of a campaign • A website review • A review of emailing programme
- 5. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 5 What are organisations doing? • 64% of actions asked people to write/edit their own message • 26% were petitions • Only 3 ‘enhanced’ petitions • Quite a few ‘DIY’ actions (eg download a letter) • Majority using email forms, half via a hosted system
- 6. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 6 Who is doing well? • Size isn’t everything. Little correlation between turnover and performance • ‘Primary campaigners’ do better than other organisations • Environmental and international poverty organisations performed strongest, Unions weakest • Global organisations strongest, UK orgs performed better than Canadian
- 7. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 7 What’s being done well? • Easy to find - 58% • Quality (relevance to campaign) - 52% • Content/copy - 60% • Ease of use - 60%
- 8. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 8 Weak areas • Background - 43% • Thank you page - 42% • Thank you message - 26% • Follow up communcation - 31%
- 9. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 9 Practices survey Email is seen to be at the heart of successful e- campaigning, with involvement in blogging and social networking sites relatively small. Many organisations are struggling, though, with the complexities of targeting and tailoring communications for their supporters. • “Consistently we find that email delivers the most actions”, (survey respondent)
- 10. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 10 About the survey • 45 organisations - self-selected • Confidential • Mostly UK (33) and Canada (9) • Carried out online June-Aug 2009
- 11. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 11 Email • ‘Small’ campaigners likely to have more of their campaigners online • 49% are taking into account supporters’ previous actions/preferences to inform emails • 72% send single-message action alerts • Only 3 split test emails • 31% systematically ‘cleaning’ their list • 33% have an email ‘welcome route’ • 9% have a strategy for ‘reactivating’ people who don’t respond
- 12. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 12 Campaigning and fundraising • 76% ask donors to take campaign action • 69% ask campaigners to donate/subscribe
- 13. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 13 Online actions • Most popular actions: email elected representative (84%), email government (78%) and tell a friend (76%) • 73% are using hosted campaign services • 11% use free services, eg ‘Write to them’
- 14. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 14 Blogs and social networks • 31% using blogs to support campaigning • 93% have a presence on a social networking site • 38% engaging directly with supporters • Facebook and twitter most popular
- 15. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 15 What does this mean for me? Learning points Contact me for your organisation’s e-action review results. Benchmark yourself - review and adapt the methodology to suit you. (Contact me for tipsheet.) Look at an action in the context of the user’s experience. Some issues will be harder or take longer to change such as tailoring email messages, but others, such as thank you messages, just take a little time and thought. • Jess Day e-campaigning consultant • Jess@jess-day.co.uk