Perhaps she’s right and email will soon join the rotary phone in the dustbin of communications history. But for now, email remains an important and effective commuications tool, albeit one that could use some strategic rethinking.

Three things to consider about your organization’s email list:

1. Size matters, but not as much as you think.

It’s axiomatic that the more people you have on your email list, the more productive that list can be for fundraising, advocacy, education, or almost anything else you’re working to inspire people to do. Of course that’s true, but focus on building as big an email list as possible often comes at the expense of focus on building as strategic an email list as possible.

It should be equally axiomatic that who’s on your email list matters as much as how many. 1,000 deeply committed activists from your target Congressional districts is better than 100,000 vaguely interested people scattered across the country. 500 people with the means to contribute something and personal connection to your organization is better than 5,000 people who are on your list just because they thought they could win an iPad if they consented to getting email from you. 100 people engaged, committed, and inspired enough to talk to their friends, family, and colleagues about your cause or organization may prove more effective than any other list you’ve got (so long as they’re the right 100 people).

So, size matters, but strategy matters more. Think about your approach to building your email list and make sure you’re looking at who you’re building relationships with, what you’re hoping to inspire them to do, and whether they’re the right people to move your mission.

2. Content matters, even more than you think.

Not very long ago, the state of the art thinking on email communications was that they key was consistent communication to keep your organization, cause, candidate, issue top of mind for the people on the email list. The conventional wisdom was that the people on your email list were kind of like moms – we just love to hear from you, even if you don’t really have anything specific to say. - So the priority was establishing a regular calendar, then filling it in with content.

For some lists at some times that might be true, but statistics on open, click-through, and conversion rates point to a new conclusion: what you say is more important than how often you say it. Assuming you’ve recruited the right people onto your list, more important than regular communication is compelling communication. Send an email when you’ve got something of value to offer or some truly important, efficacious way for the people on your list to engage.

3. Email matters. Make it more effective by integrating other channels.

Email is decidedly not dead. Not even mass email.

A few weeks ago a study revealed that 58% of people check email first thing in the morning, before doing anything else online. And mass email lists remain a critical and even growing component of many organization’s fundraising, advocacy, and education program – one that still delivers results.

However, that same study showed that more than 10% of people log onto Facebook first thing, 20% start with a search engine or portal site, and 5% head first to online news. By and large people still check their mailbox on most days and answer their phones. Be creative and test ways to engage your email audience in other channels. (Read the details of the study here: http://bit.ly/cFHXxW.)

I was tickled to be invited to speak.  I gave a presentation on measuring advocacy – an elusive and difficult task.  I’ve posted my presentation slides on the blog, and this week’s Three Things offers up the core of the approach I recommend: focus on inputs, outputs, and outcomes.

1. Inputs - these are the things we put into an advocacy campaign.  Emails sent, tweets tweeted, Facebook posts made, social media interactions, coordinated actions in coalition with other organizations or individuals, etc.  Inputs might be best understood as those things we control – these are the things we do. Inputs are also the easiest things to measure, so they’re among the most commonly measured things.

2. Outputs - these are the immediate results of all of those inputs: Volunteers recruited, petition signatures gathered, email addresses added to the list, Twitter followers, “Likes” on Facebook, emails or calls to legislators, etc.  Outputs are the meat of most advocacy campaigns.  Outputs are the results that are relatively easily measured and easily reported.  Outputs have become the bread and butter of the advocacy world, and are generally among the metrics studiously measured by sophisticated advocacy organizations.

3. Outcomes – these represent the finish line, the win or the loss, and the reason for bothering with all of those inputs and outputs.  Did the legislation pass/fail? Did key decision-makers change their minds? Did the campaign change the world in its intended ways?

As I discussed in my presentation. outputs at the most important level are impossible to measure in ways that trace directly back to any campaign.  Maybe it was all those calls to the Hill that made the difference, or maybe it was a single call to the staffer writing that section of the budget.  The process of policy making  is complex and opaque, and it’s not possible to know exactly what combination of factors led to the outcome.

However, the best advocacy campaigns have a strategy that reflects a solid political theory of change and make decisions about inputs and important outputs with that strategy always at the fore.  It’s critical to measure progress along that theory of change, test it for validity, review, decide, and repeat.  Without taking measurement beyond easily quantifiable input and outputs to frustrating difficult to quantify outputs, decisions about investments of resources – time and dollars – into advocacy activities are impossible to make in an informed way.

So, be honest: if you ponder the metrics you reported on your last advocacy campaign, how many were inputs, how many were outputs, and did you get around to taking a good hard look at outcomes?  Can you make a strong case that your advocacy efforts are connected to making the change you’re fighting for?

Let us know (and, as always, we’re here to help you figure it out if you need us).

-Shayna

This week we’re excited to offer another guest post from one of our brilliant colleagues in the world-changing business: Karen Uffelman at Groundwire recently wrote about finding your “engagement superpower.”  We were inspired and think you will be, too:

Nonprofit organizations all have missions, expertise, and a dependence on other people who care about our missions to get the work done. In a perfect world we would not have to compete for the time, attention and pocketbooks of those people upon which our success depends. We’d have all the support we required and we’d achieve our missions in no time. Comic book villains defeated. Climate change fixed.  Toxics outlawed. Urban sprawl, deforestation, disappearing biodiversity – all of that stuff would be a thing of the past.  Unfortunately, the world’s not perfect yet, and all of those good folks whose help we need have loads of other things on their minds, schedules and budgets.

To make the most difference in this imperfect world, your organization needs an engagement superpower. Here are three bits of guidance as you identify your organization’s superpower and use it for good:

1. How Are You Special?
So how do you build relationships with the good people who care about your cause, make them prioritize your cause, better engage them in your work? One excellent way is to use your unique expertise, access, skills – whatever you’re super at – to provide a product, service or experience that really matters to your target audience.   A value proposition.  And not just some vague value proposition, like, “we protect the environment,” but more along the lines of what can you do for me today? Wonder Woman, for example, fights crime, but her superpowers? Invisible plane, “lasso of truth” and, hello, magic bracelets.

Your engagement superpower shouldn’t distract from your mission-related work. In fact, your superpower should advance your mission, even be integral to it. However, an engagement superpower may be an expansion of or a departure from your historical strategies and tactics. Or something you’re already doing, but not doing much of because you didn’t realize it was a superpower.

2. Learn from Good Examples: Engagement Superpowers in Action
•    Conservation Minnesota – These guys have developed a bunch of engagement superpowers, but the one that I really love is the weather service they offer on their website. Weather is something that people want to know about everyday – and really, it’s probably the most common way that people relate to the natural environment. It’s also the starting point for any conversation about climate change. Offering a weather information service on their website has doubled Conservation Minnesota’s web traffic over the last year, and has served as a gateway for really important policy conversations about climate. Awesome engagement superpower.
•    Washington Trails Association – WTA is working to preserve, enhance, and promote hiking opportunities in Washington State. Cool, right? They lobby the legislature, they organize volunteers to repair trails, they have hiker education programs.  But their engagement superpower is a hiking trails database that is not only a great resource for hikers looking for trail information with recent updates, it’s also a place for those same hikers to post trail reports – giving back in a way that is both fun and useful. The easier it is find a hike and the more you hike, the more invested you are in the Washington Trails Association. In the last year, over 700,000 unique visitors visited WTA’s website to find or post a hike.
•    Ecology Center – The folks at Ecology Center have developed an incredible superpower and you can check it out at their HealthyStuff.org website. Once there, you can research over 5,000 consumer products, including toys and other children’s items, and find out exactly what’s toxic and what’s not. It’s a great service, behavior changer and action motivator all rolled into one. Nothing will get you more fired up about the sad state of consumer product protections than discovering that the Dora the Explorer activity tote you just bought your niece is chock full of lead, chlorine, arsenic and bromine. Yuck! This is a site that I started visiting all of the time once I found out about it.  I’ve told all of my friends with kids about it, and it has seriously engaged me in the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign.

3. Important Superpower Questions
How do you know if an experience, service or product you offer is actually an engagement superpower? Or if it has the potential to become one, if you just invested a little more?
•    Is there a market for your superpower? Is it something people actually want? Really? Would people pay for it? We’re not saying that you should charge for your superpower, but if you’re doing something that people would be willing to pay for, that’s a pretty good clue that it has superpower appeal. If you have to organize, cajole or guilt people into using or taking advantage of your superpower, well….it’s probably not a superpower.
•    Does your superpower attract people with whom you’d not otherwise be in contact?
•    Does your superpower cause people to identify themselves to you and enter into the beginning of relationship that you can further develop?
•    Is your superpower uniquely excellent? Is it something that your target audience can’t readily get from anyone else?
•    Does your superpower make your mission personally relevant to the lives of the people with whom you’re seeking to connect? This is really the key. For the true believers in your mission, they already take your issue personally. But for all of the rest of us who might be volunteering, taking action, contributing or otherwise supporting you, providing value around what’s personally relevant to us related to your issue is the best way to engage and expand your base.

1.  What’s your “raison d’etre?” In other words:  What are you doing here?  Why are you running this campaign?  What problem are you going to solve?  This may seem like a no-brainer, but all too often we see candidates, organizations and coalitions who don’t take the time on the front end to get on the same page and really answer this question.

And your answer should be as specific as possible, so you can better do all that comes next.  You can’t solve World Peace, but your campaign efforts might be convince President Obama’s State Department to put money for universal education in their budget request.

Just like when defining your goals, defining your campaign’s reason for being should be clear, focused and specific.  And all of the major players need to be in agreement on the front end to avoid bickering and disagreement later on.

2.  Who are the major players? In an electoral campaign, this would be your candidate, leadership staff, core “kitchen-cabinet” advisers, and a few major donors/raisers.  In an issue campaign it’s most likely going to be organizational staff (who’s in charge of this specific campaign), board members, top external advocates, elected officials supporting your issue, partnering organizations, and key donors.

Identifying who needs to be brought into the fold early on will help you accomplish goals later, and again, help diffuse any potential conflicts before they begin.

3.  What is your true capacity? The answer to this question will dictate the rest of your campaign planning.  Building a beautiful plan that requires 37 staff members and $27 million dollars to execute won’t do you any good if you’ve got a budget of $27 and a staff of 1.  Take a hard look at each of your major player’s capacities and abilities and then design your initial campaign plan around those elements.  Part of the plan should most likely include using your current capacity build and expand that capacity by bringing in new money to hire new staff to manage new volunteers, but off the bat you really need to be honest with your expectations and abilities so you don’t set the whole campaign up to fail before it even has a chance to succeed.

There are many, many, many other factors to consider when beginning a campaign, but without these first 3, it will be nearly impossible to go wrong on the rest.

Tell us what we missed:  drop us a line here.  Or, be in touch if we can be helpful getting you started with your new campaign!

1.  Keep It Personal. Don’t just blind copy hundreds of bloggers on a mass press release.  Just like in traditional PR, getting the coverage you want is more often than not about building relationships based on trust and the promise of mutual assistance.

When reaching out to blogs, do it individually with personal messages that show you’ve actually read that persons blog and have some awareness of their point of view as well as a sense of who their reader is.  Then, show them why your issue will be appealing as content to their readers specifically.

2.  Let them know how it will help them. Everyone is busy, so be clear about why this is a good thing for them too.  Tell them how you will spread the word about the post to your audience (thus expanding their potential readership). In addition, offer to write a guest post where you do all the work, and all they have to do it post it.

3.  Start small. The best way to gain credibility with the big blogs is to get your content posted on small blogs first, and then work your way up.  So, start with what Pick refers to as “C-List” blogs and establish yourself (or your organization) as thought-leaders, then leverage that presence when reaching out to B-list and then A-list blogs.

With studies showing that more and more Americans are looking to blogs as their primary source of news and information, organizations can no longer rely solely on “traditional media” to spread their message and establish their reputation.  If your organization isn’t already reaching out to blogs as part of your communications mix, hopefully Tom’s great article can get you started.

Facebook’s seemingly daily schedule of changes in policy, nomenclature, and tools had rendered some details in the ebook already in need of updating (updates are in progress), the crux remains true: no matter the constellation of tools, page types, and lingo (are you a “fan” or do you just “like” me?), you should have an approach to gathering actionable analytics that tell you what works, what doesn’t, and what you should test.

You can download the free ebook here: http://www.bit.ly/cvA35T.  In the meantime, three interesting things you’ll find in it’s pages:

1) Engagement with Facebook content doesn’t correlate with action for UNICEF-USA. The number of “likes” or comments on a posting do not have a strong relationship with the clickthrough rate for that posting. Since conversions – people completing the donation process – depend on clickthrough for UNICEF-USA, likes and comments aren’t strongly linked to donations, either.  This is sure to be controversial, and we recommend that UNICEF-USA set up tests to confirm this finding and explore what the real implications are for long term giving.

2) More content isn’t better. On days that UNICEF-USA posted more than three times, their unsubscribe rate rose dramatically and clickthrough decreased.  The exception to this rule was during the immediate aftermath of major natural disasters.

3) Wednesdays are the best days for clickthrough. Over eight months of data, Wednesday is consistently the best day of the week for UNICEF-USA’s clickthrough, regardless of the specific content.

Of course, the findings for your audience might be completely different, which is why we also recommend an approach to building your own measurement program.  Check out the ebook here, and as always, let us know what you think!

Compelling personal stories put a human face on complex or abstract issues.  The success of some recent issue advocacy campaigns, including an effort to pass a comprehensive clean indoor air law in Kansas and a campaign to protect a program that reimburses hospitals for the care provided to the poorest Minnesotans, spotlight the important role that grassroots participation can play in influencing public policy.

Upon closer inspection, these winning issue advocacy campaigns shared common characteristics and offer up an opportunity to review some important lessons for grassroots success:

1.       Use “Old” Technology in Unexpected Ways (otherwise known as a story about phones!): We get excited about experimenting with new tools for grassroots advocacy and organizing, but let’s not forget about using tried and true methods in new ways!   In recent issue advocacy campaigns in various states, phones have be used creatively (e.g., decentralized volunteer phone banks and capturing messages from constituents) to influence elected officials, increase public support and awareness, and generate earned media.

For example, an innovative phone program helped the Clean Air Kansas campaign to rapidly identify supporters in key legislative districts and capture recorded messages from constituents.   Through the phone program, more than 11,000 supporters of a statewide clean indoor air policy were identified, and nearly 3,000 constituent messages were recorded via phone, burned onto CDs, and sent to elected officials.  The CDs allowed elected officials to hear directly from smoke-free supporters living in their districts, and gave them an important perspective on the scope and depth of support for a comprehensive smoke-free policy in their state.  In certain districts, messages from constituents were also shared with media outlets, which generated coverage of the Clean Air Kansas campaign and its unique phone program.

2.       Integrate Online and Offline Calls to Action: Remember, even those who are very supportive of your issue still have a number of other causes competing for their attention.  The more you can reach people through various means, the more likely they will be to take action.  Recent success in Minnesota demonstrated the effectiveness of, for example, layered outreach through email alerts, social media, and calls from decentralized volunteer phone banks to increase supporters’ actions.

3.       Cultivate Leadership: Identify rising stars among your issue campaign’s supporters and nurture their efforts.  Be transparent and share expertise, knowledge, and strategic thinking.  This requires time and a willingness to relinquish some control to your volunteers, but the trade-offs of empowering more people to assume more leadership within your issue campaign far outweigh the risks.  Not to mention, the lack of opportunities to grow skills, connect with others, or provide input on the campaign’s direction are all surefire ways to diminish supporters’ interest  in your effort.

Lindsay Hanson is a senior consultant at Grassroots Solutions, a national consulting firm that specializes in the areas of grassroots organizing, strategy, training, and evaluation.

Working in the silo of politics, especially at a time when the national debate is so uber-focused on a few big issues (healthcare, anyone?), one might assume that articles about politics, Congress, issue debates, and the like would predominate among the shared links.

Or, setting politics aside, misery loves company, right?  We assumed negative articles, or articles discussing negative topics (the Iraq War, the millions of Americans without healthcare, the appalling state of our public schools) might get passed around to friends, family or those whose opinions one might be trying to change.

Turns out, neither is the case.  The study showed that “awe-inspiring” articles, especially about science, predominated the most emailed list.

We wonder if this finding doesn’t have broader implications for how causes communicate with the people on our email list, and whether we might do well to rethink how we mobilize our communities – or at least test some modifications.

The general “formula” for email messaging, at least specifically for “ask” messages, goes something like this:

A.  Brief Introduction to the issue
B.  Stark description of the problem (or what the opposition is up to)
C.  The Ask – do this to help solve the problem!
D.  Reminder of the problem
E.  Ask Again
F.  Inspiring closing line about how goodness and justice will prevail over evil because of their action

This is such an ubiquitous formula, that we had difficulty finding an email that didn’t utilize it, at least for the most part.  And why not use it?

The NYT findings got us thinking: maybe, instead of focusing on the negative aspects of our issues, we should instead talk more about the amazing positive things that have happened lately, either because of the efforts of our organization or due to the act of secondary (or even unrelated) partners.

Backing into this theory is the old “peer pressure” adage that we also take advantage of when motivating action.  “Join the thousands just like you who are emailing the President right now…”

What if we simply rethought how we utilize peer pressure and combined it more with the positive, awe-inspiring messages?

Instead of sending messages that regale readers with the vastness of the problem, and telling them that their email to the White House is the solution, why not share inspiring stories of success achieved through collective action that leads to an ask that calls on the individual reading your message to follow in the footsteps of those other ordinary citizens?

Have you tested this different approach in your communications? We’d love to hear your findings.

The thrust of the proclamations is this: it’s time to move past counting clicks and obsessing about list size.  The number of fans you have or Twitter followers you’ve amassed isn’t the important thing.  The important thing is whether the work you’re doing is making the change in the world your organization exists to make.   The manifesto urges some shifts in thinking that are bound to be controversial.

We’ve endorsed the Web Thinking Manifesto, and hope you’ll read the whole thing: http://bit.ly/d5Nxxc.  It’s caused a bit of a stir in our sector.  We’ve been pondering on it quite a bit and have landed on our favorite proclamations, those we’re a bit skeptical of, and humbly offer up an 11th proclamation:

We love these proclamations:

Proclamation 2: We Will Engage Web Thinkers in Leadership
We will make it mandatory for the people in charge of Internet and digital strategies to be in senior staff meetings – and be sure they serve at the highest level of the organization. Planning a new campaign or initiative without “new media” at the table is as foolish as holding that same meeting without Communications or Membership Directors.

Yes yes yes! Even better…Communications and Membership should include online thinkers as leaders, since online tactics are carrying ever more of the water in those departments.

Proclamation 3: We Will Engage Everyone in Web Thinking
We will understand the difference between IT and the Internet and ensure all staff share responsibility for leveraging the web in their daily work. Not everyone will understand the latest tools and tricks, but collectively, we will appreciate the web’s value and the critical role it plays in the lives of our audiences.

We’re well past the era where anyone should ever confuse the roles of the people who make sure our computers work (bless you, IT team!) and the people who communicate, recruit, fundraise and more using computers to connect to the world.

Proclamation 10: We Will Be Nimble
We will move at the speed of the Internet – and the instantaneous news cycle. We will set up structures that eschew bureaucracy and allow us to move both quickly and strategically. Organizations that are positioned to respond rapidly are rewarded. We will redefine what it means to be proactive on issues. We will create and distribute news directly and we will hijack, adapt, and redirect the traditional news cycle to fit our campaigns and issues.

Again, yes yes yes. The behemoths who need 2 hour senior staff meetings and three weeks to make small adjustments to message and audience will be left in the dust. Nimble and quick are the quintessential keys to success these days, for better and for worse.

We’re unconvinced about these:

Proclamation 1: We Will Position Ourselves as Movement Leaders
We will be more concerned with our cause, our broader mission in the world than with building a brand or institution. And we will reflect this reality in all of our work. We seek to work across traditional boundaries of race, class, gender identification and religion to build alliances that truly represent the people impacted by our issues. We can’t be afraid to talk about other efforts in our space, to link generously and be genuinely proud of the successes of our friends and allies. Their success drives our success and drives the change that makes our existence worthwhile.

We’re skeptical because we think brands and institutions do matter in this increasingly fragmented world. It’s harder than ever to tell real grassroots from astroturf, advocacy from advertising, and genuine voices from those generated by “social media experts.”  We love the emphasis on coordination, cooperation, and sharing credit and successes… we’re just not sure developing well-respected brands and institutions don’t play an important role in all that generosity.

Proclamation 4: We Will Hire Digital Natives
We will embrace millennials because we understand the difference between learning about technology and growing up digital – between speaking Internet as a foreign language and speaking web natively. Internet culture is radically changing the way people engage not only with one other but also with organizations. Transparency, collaboration, and open dialog – millennials can show us how to develop these cultural norms and values. We will listen and learn with them.

Pluralities if not majorities of the people who do the most work for many organizations and causes, particularly those that have been around for more than a decade or two, are older than millenials and approach online tools for engaging causes and making a difference in the world much differently than digital natives.  Yes, we need millenials.  But we also need people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even older (gasp!) to help bridge digital divides and gaps in how people of different generations, access, and comfort levels with technology want to connect and plug in.

We hope Michael and Tim add this:

We Will Remember That It’s Not About The Campaign
We will not obsess solely about clickthrough and sizes of lists (in house and dispersed) and will not celebrate just tactical victories. We will obsess about power maps and strategic intelligence, not just application of the newest-best-most-visible-everyone’s-dong-it-latest apps. We will keep our eye on the ball and evaluate openly and honestly whether our tactics are connected to real life change.

What do you think?  Weigh in on the conversation here http://bit.ly/d5Nxxc or in the comments.