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Campaign Monitor has a world-class blog and e-newsletter

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:49:22 +0000

I just got a copy of the latest Campaign Monitor e-newsletter and was so impressed that I thought I’d comment on it, and some of the items that I think are worth checking out.

Campaign Monitor are an email service provider – that is, they let you manage email campaigns to subscribers and provide analytics. I should point out that I don’t use their service (I use MailChimp instead), and no, there’s no affiliate program or payment for this post – I just think they’re awesome.

Building your email list – Panic

Panic have done a great job building a subscribe form into the first run experience of all their software. Here’s the screen you see when loading Transmit 4 for the first time. They’ve even gone to the trouble of pre-populating the email field for you (not shown in the screenshot), removing as much friction as possible from the process. My only suggestion here would be to leave the subscribe field unchecked to guarantee every customer gives explicit permission and doesn’t just jump to the “Let’s Go!” button.

Read the entire blog post.

Using print media to market your online services

We commonly get asked to provide examples of reseller collateral such as executive summaries and slide decks. The great news is that these aren’t that far off, however in the meantime, we’d like to share Mailbox Design’s brochure as inspiration for your own marketing campaigns. Not only does it provide a concise summary of what a rebranded Campaign Monitor account has to offer, but also provides some very compelling reasons why email totally blows other sales and marketing channels out of the water. In short, the kind of stuff your new clients really want to see. Take a look at their brochure. (400kb, PDF)

Read the entire blog post.

Supercharge your email list with Flowtown

I stumbled across Flowtown a few weeks ago and couldn’t really understand why anyone would use it. Campaign Monitor shows just how useful it can be – and I hope there is integration with MailChimp.

Using Flowtown integration with Campaign Monitor, we can now turn our humble subscriber lists into rich social media profiles, based on information spread across services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. What’s better, Flowtown automatically populates your Campaign Monitor subscriber list with custom fields including geographic location, gender and even age range, so you can segment your campaigns in unprecedented ways. Here’s a short screencast that wraps it up nicely.

Read the entire blog post.

Five effective political lobbying tools for unions

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:41:09 +0000

Unions and union members are the largest voluntary associations in Australia, representing millions of workers in tens of thousands of work places. Legislation can have a profound impact on the rights and entitlements of working people, such as changes to occupational health and safety, tax, industrial relations, and trade and industry policy.

It is therefore entirely natural for unions and union members to lobby parliamentarians. Over the last few years, many unions have increasingly sent delegations of members to Canberra or State Parliaments to meet with key Members of Parliament, Ministers and advisors.

With the Federal election coming up this year, and state elections in Victoria in November 2010, it is timely to consider some effective lobbying tools. I’ve written here about two tips for union members to lobby their MPs – which is pretty general advice. Below are five more concrete tools for unions and union members to lobby their MPs.

1. Direct Contact

Direct contact covers a range of different tools, including letters, phone calls, emails, and faxes, urging a certain position on a specific issue.

Letters: Letters are fairly effective, but only if they are written by local constituents. Members of Parliament tend to ignore letters from people outside their electorates. They also tend to ignore “form letters” – since it is obvious that they are from the same campaign. Far better to get union members to write their own letters but provide “taking points” or an issue briefing so that members can easily see the main issues, but write the letter in their own words.
Phone calls: Again, phone calls are only valuable from constituents (this will be a theme), and it is unlikely that any callers will be able to personally speak to the MP. However, the electorate officers will take notes of calls, especially if there are lots of calls about the same issue. Unions considering this should provide talking points for their members, as well as some simple Q and As so that the members can rebut any party or government lines.
Emails: Email campaigning was originally thought of as revolutionary. Supposedly you could get hundreds or thousands of people to press a button and send an email to a boss or politician. However, recently it’s become clear that for email campaigns to succeed, the volume of emails must by truly massive. Eric Lee suggests that an email campaign needs a minimum of 5,000 or so emails, and from my experience in organising several email campaigns, this is about on the money. Politicians get so many emails that its easy for them to ignore email campaigns of any size except the truly massive. Filtering technology allows MPs to easily partition their inboxes to that it doesn’t impact their work. Similarly, by emailing MPs, Ministers or a boss, you hand over the contact details of your supporters. In several cases, I’m aware of Ministers and bosses emailing each of the protesters back with a carefully written rebuttal of the campaign. Unions should be aware of this eventuality and plan for a contingency. Nevertheless, email campaigns are great ways to build your email lists. Personal, custom written emails from your supporters are far more effective, and a letter has more power than an email.
Fax: This is a fairly old-school lobbying technique, and mass-fax campaigns do little except waste paper. I’ve spoken with several MPs who’ve been subject to fax campaigns, and in each case they advised me that their electorate officers disposed of the mass faxes. The net impact: zero.

The general advice, which is fairly standard, is that personal emails, letters and calls from constituents are more effective than form emails and letters. Phone calls are more effective than letters, which are more effective than emails. Faxes (in my view) are least effective.

2. Personal Intercepts

Personal contact is most effective of all. The contact need not be with the politician, but can be with their electorate officers and advisors. There are several places that this personal contact can occur: meetings in the MP’s electorate or parliamentary office, at fundraisers, debates, or public events like street-stalls or town-hall meetings. Unions in Australia can also try to make contact with Labor MPs or advisors at branch meetings or policy committee meetings.

This kind of contact can be either union members, or officials. In either case, the person making contact should be properly briefed on the issue, and, most importantly, seek some kind of commitment. This could be a formal meeting, a pledge (see below) or some kind of assistance or statement.

Contact can then be followed up – and the union should consider whether this follow up can be made public. For example, the union could write a letter to the local paper reporting on the meeting and any outcomes. They could write a blog post on their website. Or they could get the union member to call the local talk-back radio to recap the encounter. Of course, the union and union members should make sure that they are not revealing discussions that they undertook to keep confidential.

3. Pledges and Surveys

This is a tactic used often in the USA, and sometimes by conservative groups in Australia. They are surveys or pledge letters sent to MPs asking them for a public statement on their position on a particular issue.

The pledge can be useful for both political persuasions. For example, the union could send a pledge asking the candidate or MP to pledge that “I, candidate X, pledge not to vote to to remove the rights of working people…” If the candidate or MP responds in an unfavourable way (or does not respond at all), that is an opportunity to get some local news.

Similarly, MPs or candidates that respond positively can be future allies on that issue, and could be followed up with a letter or personal visit.

4. Social Media

I’ve written extensively on how unions can use social media. During elections, social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be useful as both a media aggregator for campaign media stories, and also to disseminate key messages.

In my view, email is the most effective way to get your message out and to have supporters actually do something in the real world. Email is also useful in building a following on Facebook or Twitter. Analytics can ensure that you can see how effective your efforts are.

Importantly, social media is not a magical solution, but it can make a small campaign look much larger than it really is.

It is also useful platform to get free media. Political parties do this all the time by releasing a campaign advertisement on YouTube rather than on television. This ad nevertheless gets played on prime-time news, amplifying its effect much more than it ever would by itself. A key element to ads like this is production quality – the YouTube ads should be television quality in both sound and vision.

5. SMS/Text Messaging

Smart phones are becoming ubiquitous and almost everyone with a mobile phone knows how to send and receive text messages. The technology to use SMS effectively is also becoming affordable, giving supporters and union members instantaneous updates, event details, campaign messages and links to online campaign websites.

Similarly, unions can also encourage members to send text messages to MPs or bosses.

It boggles me that the ACTU Rights at Work campaign doesn’t have an iPhone app or apps for Android or Blackberry phones (UPDATE: I’m advised that work is being done on an iPhone and Android app – although there is not one currently). Similarly, I’m aware of no Australian political party with an iPhone app (although that’s the subject of another post).

Iphone apps for unions could have a range of uses, including making campaign videos and other media available on a member’s phone, as well as make facts and figures available immediately, and allow members to be directly “patched” to an MP’s office to have a phone conversation. Iphone apps could also allow union members to sign petitions and send emails on the go.

Most of the tools I’ve gone through here are fairly standard and mostly low-tech. I hope to see some innovation from the union movement, both in Australia and for the mid-term elections in the United States.

With most Australians online and owning mobile phones, even unions that cover blue collar industries, or low-paid service sectors will find that their members have regularly checked email addresses, Facebook accounts and oft-used SMS capable phones.

Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:33:24 +0000

In Australia, most elections take place during the normal, general election period. The accepted wisdom is that local campaigns make up, at most, 3 percent of a candidate’s primary vote. The rest comes from the central campaign from party head office: television ads, the leader’s personal appeal, the party’s policies and so on.

There are some simple things that local campaigns can do however to maximise their vote and try to reach that 3 percent boost.

Many of these ideas are more widely applicable for running online campaigns in general, and for unions in particular.

1. Have a presence on the main social networking sites

Set up a profile or page on Facebook, and depending on your campaign’s demographics, on MySpace, and Twitter.With over 6 million Australians on Facebook, 2.3 million on MySpace and around 670,000 Australians on Twitter, these are social networking sites you cannot afford to ignore. If you already have a profile on Facebook, consider setting up an official Facebook page, so you can benefit from the many extra features that pages have over groups or profiles (see here for an example of the benefits).

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the flavour of the month, don’t neglect MySpace. MySpace is still used by a large number of young people (high-schoolers), and it can be a way for you to build a longer-term relationship with teens, especially if that is a big demographic in your electorate.

If someone on your campaign team has a video camera and some experience, set up a YouTube and Vimeo channel (check here for how to do this on YouTube, and go here to set up a YouTube politician’s channel). Recording and broadcasting short campaign messages is a good way to directly talk with your electors, and sites like YouTube can be easily shared by your supporters on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you have a call to action, such as donating, volunteering or joining your campaign mailing list.

2. Have a blog on your website

Get a campaign website if you don’t already have one. In addition to your policies, biography and how to subscribe to your mailing list, you should also make sure you have a blog. There are many easy options to install a blog on your website, and most of them are free. Using WordPress, Moveable Type or Google’s Blogger are easy to set up, and most offer a way to install or embed the blog into your own website. I personally prefer WordPress, but depending on what content management system your website uses, you may have to use another blogging platform.

Blogs are very important for search engine optimisation reasons. Blogs help you draw traffic to your site through online search engines. When most people want to find out information about a candidate, they got to their search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo or Bing). Most blogging software is optimised for search engines, which means that it pushes your website higher up the search page. Blogs also give you an opportunity to engage with your electors and supporters. Many voters will appreciate the transparency – and you can use it to promote your events and activities.

You don’t need to personally update your blog every day. Get someone on your campaign to add blog posts – but make sure they don’t pretend to post as you. Keep your posts and the posts of your staff distinct.

Don’t expect to be getting hundreds or thousands of page views or visitors, or scores of comments on your website straight away. Promote your blog and your website in all your other communications – emails to supporters, ads in the local paper, on flyers you hand out while door-knocking. You can also advertise online…

3. Build a campaign email list

Email is still the most effective online campaigning tool. Having a large list of supporters and electors means you can directly communicate with them, without the filter of the local news. Email is very effective at building engagement and directing people to your website.

There are lots of email service providers that allow you to create email campaigns, and get data about opens. I’ve got a post here (Email is the “killer app” for online campaigns) that goes into some detail about using email.

Early in your campaign, you should be aiming to build your campaign email list – have a sign up form at all of your campaign events (fundraisers, street-stalls, etc). The people on your campaign list will be useful as volunteers, donors and of course, eventually they should vote for you.

4. Advertise online with Facebook and Google

Online advertising is an increasingly effective way to get your message to your target audience. Most online advertising lets you micro-target your ads using key words. Google Adsense and Facebook Ads are probably the most effective online advertising vehicles, although there are others (e.g. MySpace and Yahoo). Most of them allow you to set a daily, weekly or campaign budget, so you can carefully manage your advertising spend. Even a small budget of a few hundred dollars can pay big dividends. Google has a page especially for political ads – so they’ve made it easy for you.

Facebook ads can let you target people in your electorate, and also target people who share your values. Your ad can direct potential supporters to your Facebook page, or to your website.

Each ad should have a specific purpose (“call to action”), such as building your campaign email list, getting people to donate, or volunteer, or vote for you on election day.

You can also use online ads to respond to attacks against you by your opponent. By putting your response online (such as on your blog or as a YouTube video), you can use key words search terms on Google to make sure that when an elector looks for more information about the attack, they will see a link to your response. Generally, there is no more than a 3 day window for this kind of response, so act quickly.

5. Use Google Analytics or other analytics programs

There are lots of analytics programs out there, some free, some paid. The bench-mark is Google Analytics, a free service. By setting up a Google Analytics account, you can get detailed information about who comes to your website and how they use it. Google Analytics can be integrated with most email service providers, as well as Google Adsense. Google also offers other free services for websites, such as Website Optimizer, that allow you to experiment in changes to your website to make it easier to use.

UPDATE:

I should also mention a few useful resources for website testing and optimisation that can be used by relative novices. A useful tool that I’ve used on the Creative Unions website is Usabilla, an excellent free website usability testing service. They allow free testing for up to 25 users. Jackob Nielsen, the father of web usability, suggests that you only need 5 test subjects to find around 90% of the problems with your website. Testing your campaign website has never been easier (or cheaper). Just make sure you act on the findings.

6. Monitor the media and social networks

There are many free tools that allow you to track news stories about your candidate, opponent or other important topics. Google Alerts can give you immediate email notification of news stories based on key words you choose.You can also get alerts for blogs, allowing you to respond to criticisms online, reply to questions or thank supporters.

Twitter has excellent tools to allow you to monitor key words in people’s updates. Twitter Search is basic, but there are other tools, such as Twendz, which gives you more information about what people are saying about a key word. This can be very useful to get up to the minute information about what is happening locally, or what people are saying about your, your opponent or the election generally.

7. Make it easy for supporters to donate, volunteer online

Wherever your campaign is online, you need to make it easy for supporters to get involved and help your campaign. There should be a clear way for a supporter to offer to volunteer to help your campaign. You should set up an online donation account. Your communications, online and offline, should emphasise how people can get involved.

Beware and be careful

Everything you do and say online can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. Once the campaigning starts, be aware that your opponents will be scrutinising your online activities as well as everything you do and say on the campaign trail.

Something will go wrong. Whether it is a misinterpreted comment on your blog, or a “tweet” taken out of context, it is highly likely that something will go wrong.

The best way to handle this mishaps is, like all crisis management, to be honest, acknowledge the mistake, explain how you are remedying the problem, and move on. Ensure your response is timely – within 24 hours is a good benchmark. If possible, break the story on your own terms rather than wait to be called by the local paper or news outlet.

Do not try to hide it. Don’t delete the comment or tweet and hope that no one will notice – there are several websites that scan web pages and cache them, allowing people to look at stored versions of your website days, weeks or even months after you have removed the content.

Google Alerts and similar services will allow you to monitor what is being said, so you can make further responses as time goes on. Internet advertising will also allow you to keep your message on the front page of searches.

Some good rules of thumb to help prepare you for a crisis are:

Brainstorm with your campaign team some worst-case scenarios: Sit down and think about the worst that could happen. Try to think of ten things that could go wrong – for example: accidentally “friending” a known criminal or other undesirable person; running foul of spam laws; running out of money or a problem with fundraising; accusations of hypocrisy in the campaign (such as having a policy of supporting local businesses, but getting material printed outside the electorate, or supporting strong environmental standards but using unrecyclable paper)
Make someone responsible for responding to a crisis: Whether it’s the campaign manager or someone else with media/PR/communications experience, make sure there is someone who’s job it is to get on top of a crisis if or when it arises. This will mean that if something does happen, you won’t waste time figuring out who should respond. This person should be responsible for having a plan to respond to campaign hiccups. They should know who to talk to about getting a response out as soon as possible, such as the campaign website maintainer, and the candidate to make a media comment.
Pre-prepare some online keywords: Think about what keywords people will use to search online for more information about the crisis. Use positive words as well as negative ones. Your press releases, blog posts and videos can be optimised for these search terms, and it will save you time when the crisis hits.
Have a design, mailer or other material ready: Ask your campaign designer and/or webmaster to have a template ready for you to respond online and offline to the crisis. Having half the work done will mean you can respond much more quickly.
Find allies: Finding a third party to stand up for you is essential to crisis management. For online mishaps, getting a blogger to comment positively on the crisis, and link to your online response is a good way of getting your message out. Having the third party gives your message increased credibility. Hopefully, through your online engagement, there will be several people you can rely on – even if they are not local constituents.

Remember, online campaigning is not a silver bullet

Just because you have set up a Facebook page or joined Twitter, don’t neglect all of the other important activities of campaigning. You still need to fundraise, door knock, make phone calls, hold street stalls, and engage your electors in the flesh.

Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:58 +0000

Facebook is a tremendous communications tool for unions – especially white-collar unions – and with only a small amount of technical know-how, it can also be super-charged for organising and campaigning.

If you haven’t already, check my earlier articles about unions using Facebook: Best practice use of Facebook for unions and Using Facebook as an organising tool.

Many unions now sporting a Facebook Group, Profile or Page. What few unions know however is that Facebook allows you to add HTML into a Page to embed mailing list applications.

Build your union’s email list with Facebook

There is no doubt that Facebook is an essential place for unions to be present. With over 100 million monthly users in the USA alone, there is little point for unions to try to recreate their own social networking site (although unions should of course be aware that different demographics use different sites). Many union members and potential members are already regular users of Facebook.

Similarly, email is the most cost-effective means to reach large numbers of people – whether they are members, supporters, non-members and the general community.

The screenshot above is from the Creative Unions Facebook page. With only around an hours worth of fiddling, we were able to add a sign up form from our MailChimp account, with a nifty little graphic. This means that anyone who fills out the form will be automatically added to our MailChimp database.

By no means are we the first to do this. The SEIU Facebook page has a splash sign up form – presumably attached to whatever email service provider they use.

Facebook fans can be passionate fans of their union. Facebook allows fans to easily interact with your union – through the “like” feature or comments. By cultivating these fans, you can build a group of passionate online advocates. By keeping a regular stream of content, events and activities for your fans, you can keep them engaged, and build relationships with them. Facebook users are far more likely to use the “like” function than leave a comment – so it’s a good idea to treat comments like you would an email.

By adding an online email sign up form to your Facebook page, you can start to turn your Facebook fans into real campaign assets. While many unions will already have email addresses for members, the Facebook page can attract supporters and non-members as well. These are crucial groups to have contact information for.

Facebook pages are also easy to promote online. Once a person becomes a fan, it is far easier to encourage them to sign up for emails than if they had no other contact with your union.

Tutorials

There are two great tutorials on how to set up an email sign up form on your Facebook page. The MailChimp one is obviously focused on how to add a MailChimp form, but the theory is the same.

Note: this only works for Facebook pages. It does not work (yet) for groups or profiles. If your union does not yet have a Facebook page, I suggest you set one up as soon as possible.

MailChimp: Adding a Newsletter Subscribe Form to Your Facebook Fan Page

Return on Subscriber: Add a Newsletter Opt-In Box to your Facebook Page

Email is the “killer app” for online campaigning

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:30:31 +0000

The Massachusetts election has blown open the mainstream media’s infatuation with social networking tools, with headlines like “the iphone app that killed Coakley“. On the techblogs, there is also detailed examination of new tools that aided the winning Mass. Senate candidate Scott Brown. I am hardly immune to the temptation of writing about the exiting new online tools and their applicability for union campaigns.

The fact remains however that email is the “killer app” for online campaigning, and will remain so for a long time.

Campaign Monitor, a well-respected SAS provider that allows companies to create email campaigns, has crunched the numbers in a very interesting article:

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, email’s capacity to drive traffic has a long tail. Whereas the traffic from Twitter and Facebook comes in bursts lasting as long as it takes for the message to fall off the bottom of the feed (2-3 days), email continues to collect clicks and opens for days (if not weeks) to come.

Campaign Monitor points out that email not only provides the bulk of website visits, but that visitors via email are more likely to visit the site days or even months after the original email was sent. This compares to Twitter and Facebook (and anecdotally Digg) which sees a spike in traffic over a day or two, without any “long tail”.

I recommend you read the entire post here.

Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, who was intimately involved in Obama’s campaign, is a big proponent of email as a campaign-winning tool. He makes the point that building a large email list was key to the victory in 2008. Of course, building the email list took hard work using “old” methods – campaign rallies, street stalls, and so on.

While social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow for two-way communication, most people are familiar with email as a means to have a conversation. This is certainly borne out by an article from ShareThis, a large provider of “link sharing” apps that people can add to their websites. ShareThis tools allow readers to share links with friends using a range of social networking tools, like Twitter, Facebook and by email. ShareThis found that:

Despite reports of its demise, e-mail is still the most popular method of sharing, and despite its meteoric rise of late, Twitter is still not a very popular sharing channel. In our research, we found that 46 percent of shares came via e-mail, 33 percent from Facebook, 14 percent from other channels such as Digg, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, etc., and just 6 percent from Twitter.

I recommend you read the entire ShareThis article, as it also suggests that while most people share content using email, the click-through rate for Twitter is much higher.

Email also allows you to have a simple, direct call to action. You can engage the reader, then ask them to do something. Having that call to action – join, donate, buy, protest – is essential to effective email campaigns. You can see the success of the email in whether the people who open it do what you ask. An email without a strong call to action is wasted.

Using analytics tools made available by services like Campaign Monitor (and Mail Chimp, which is what we use for the NTEU and Creative Unions) allows you to better use email. You can track things like open rates and clicks; and when used with Google Analytics, you can get a good idea of how people use your website. For unions wanting people to join online or take some kind of online campaign action, this can be invaluable.

Read my post on “the art of writing better union emails“, which also goes into the value of analytics for email.

Microblogging: Jumping on the bandwagon

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:55:53 +0000

A lot of people are starting to talk about microblogging – a short form of blogging. The most successful and well-known microblogging platform is, of course, Twitter. However, there are several others, such as Tumblr, Pownce and Posterous. Microblogging is a kind of social networking, as it focuses on sharing, networking and communities.

Eric Lee of LabourStart has written about the utility of microblogging for unions, recommending the service Posterous. I have differing views about the utility of this approach, which I will go into later. Despite Lee’s strong advocacy for unions to utilise Posterous as a campaign tool, I’m not aware of any unions that do (LabourStart does, but please leave a comment if you do know of one).

Microblogging is, as the name describes, is small-scale blogging, typically 200 words or less. Twitter takes this to extreme, only allowing 140 characters. Other microblogging services like Posterous or Tumblr (the two most used microblogging services after Twitter) don’t have a word limit; however, they are mostly used for photos, videos or other multimedia content. Most text articles on microblogging sites are short.

Both Tumblr and Posterous can aggregate content from other sources (such as Twitter, Flickr and so on) and publish it, or broadcast material published to other services (e.g. publish a post from Tumblr to Twitter). As Eric Lee explains in his article, they can be updated via email, and will automatically publish emails sent to the nominated account email.

Update: A useful explanation of Posterous:

The big differentiator between Posterous and a traditional blog platform like WordPress is that all content is published via email. Sending text to Posterous creates a text post. Including a photo or video attachment results in those being shown on the post. If multiple photos are attached, a gallery is created. Posterousâ€™ other notable feature is that it can then notify other social networks of your content. Photos can be sent to Flickr or Facebook. Links to the Posterous post can be published to Twitter or a Facebook news feed. Videos can be sent to YouTube, Vimeo, or the like.

Is microblogging useful for unions?

Eric Lee’s LabourStart article contends that Posterous (or similar services) are “the cheapest, easiest and fastest way to create an online presence” for your union’s campaign. Especially since it links into your campaign’s email list. (Incidental to this is Lee’s assumptions on using email for campaigns – something I generally strongly agree with.)

And it’s true – setting up a Posterous site is very easy. It simply requires an email be sent, and your Posterous account is automatically created (typically making a unique web page for you, such as “yourname.posterous.com”). You don’t even need to create an account first. Posterous does automatically handle embedding images, videos and other file types. It also easily links to other social networking tools.You can also customise what unique web page your entries appear on.

But is that useful?

Posterous and other microblogging sites (including Twitter) are not silver bullets to unions’ online campaigning. The essence of social networking, and microblogging, is to build relationships – with members, non-members, supporters and the general community.

What Eric Lee proposes is to use Posterous as an activity feed. A stream of events with no context or personality.

I’ve written elsewhere that social networking should be about conversations. I’ve also pointed out that social networking services should be carefully chosen. Creating a Posterous site for your union campaign should be weighed up and considered as part of the campaign’s overall strategy and plan.

Your online campaign activity should compliment your campaigns other activities, especially organising. Using social networking tools like Twitter or microblogging services like Posterous, as de facto public archives will guarantee only that no one reads or engages with your online activity.

Now, if you’ve decided that you want a public archive of your campaign’s email broadcasts, then by all means, Posterous and other similar services are well suited. However, be aware that you will not engage many members, supporters or non-members with this approach. People can tell when something is automated.

Automated content is not what people are interested in engaging with online. They want genuine interaction – afterall social media is just that: social.

Keeping it in-house

Adding to the case against using microblogging in the way that Eric Lee suggests is that most unions like to keep things “in house”. That is, to use the union’s main website as the host for all online campaign activities, archives, resources and so on.

Over at Creative Unions, I looked at how most unions don’t have separate campaign sites. The union, having invested the time and resources into establishing its website, understandably doesn’t want to send members away to another site.

This is especially the case when the other site is an external, for-profit microblogging company. Even blogging sites like Google’s Blogger.com or Automatic’s WordPress.com have this problem. If you use Posterous (or similar), all your information, your campaign’s archives and other related material (photos, videos, etc) are hosted by a third-party.

Of course, a union may not possess the knowledge, expertise of capability to run a detailed campaign archive on its own website. You will therefore need to weight the costs and benefits for using Posterous or a similar service.

How can you better use microblogging?

At the moment, Posterous and other microblogging sites are not very useful for union campaigns. While they are very simple to use, requiring little or no technical know-how, they are also a straight jacket. They are difficult to customise, and designed for short messages and multi-media. They are designed to be personal.

This is how unions should use Posterous or other microblogging services. To be personal and to tell a story. A microblog could be useful for a union that doesn’t have time to maintain a fully fledged blog and a host of other social media tools. Microblogging can therefore be a social media bridge between blogging and Twitter.

Posterous can thus be used for short updates on the union’s activities (or on a specific campaign’s activities). This shouldn’t be simply an automated list of media releases and emails. Rather, it should be made up of similar content that you would put on Twitter, Facebook or a blog: Quotes from members, photos from rallies or members meetings, short videos of speeches, or copies of campaign material (such as posters or leaflets).

So long as the microblog follows the Four Pillars of Social Networking, it can act as a replacement for maintaining separate Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Posterous has a useful service that allows you to use your own custom domains with Posterous’ microblogging service. This means that you can keep the Posterous activity “in house”, rather than have it appear on a third-party’s website.

As an example, I’ve created a Posterous “sub domain” for this site. Now, http://posterous.alexwhite.org has all my Posterous articles on it. A union, if it wanted to keep traffic coming to its own website, could thus create a sub domain on their website for their Posterous campaign.

And don’t forget: all social networking takes time and effort. There’s no silver bullet.

Useful Resources:

Read Write Web: 10 Micro-blogging Tools Compared
Ma.tt (WordPress founder): Micro-blogging vs Mega-blogging
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The art of writing better union emails

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:52:00 +0000

Most unions regularly use emails to communicate with members. This can be responding to emails sent by members, or as email bulletins and newsletters. Many unions do not, however, follow some of the basic email etiquette rules, and often make simple mistakes.

Writing effective emails, whether it is a reply to a concerned member, or a e-newsletter to 10,000 members, is an art that can be easily learned through following a few simple guidelines.

It may surprise you to know that in the not for profit sector, only 13-27% of emails actually get opened. The rest remain unopened or deleted.

1. Keep it short and simple

Like all writing for the internet, writing for emails must be brief, concise and easy to read.

Many unions write long emails that cover multiple topics. This practice may be acceptable for e-newsletters, but not for general bulletins, updates or replies.

Most people get bombarded with emails every day. An office worker may receive 50 or more emails in a day, and irregular users of emails (who may only check their account every few days) could have dozens of emails to read.

Union emails must therefore convey important information in the short time the reader likely has before they move to their next email.

Even e-newsletters should not be overly long. The content in newsletter should be clearly and rationally laid out, so that the reader knows how to find the content they are looking for.

If you must have lots of content, try to put it on your union’s website, and link to it in the email, so readers with the time or inclination to read it can do so at their leisure, while those who are uninterested can go to other content

2. Ineffective subject lines or “From” fields

Many union emails have subject lines like “Union Circular 323/09 re Next AREO Training Course”, “URGENT: Important Enterprise Bargaining Information Inside” or just “Union Bulletin 21″.

Needless to say, these aren’t very engaging or easy to understand subject lines. Why would a member open the email?

Union emails must be descriptive, simple and consistent. Email subject lines should describe the content of the email. If it is a newsletter, say it’s a newsletter. If it’s collective bargaining information, describe the information.

Avoid “spammy” subject lines – anything that looks like it is putting a “hard sell”, or is in All-Caps is likely to remain unopened, deleted or picked up by the member’s spam filter.

Subject lines should be short. Long subject lines can often by truncated by email programs, so that the reader doesn’t see the entire line. Similarly, readers can be turned off by long subject lines and simply decide not to open it.

Another tip is: don’t try to get too creative. Most people get lots of emails trying to sell them things. The subject lines for these emails often read like a headline in a newspaper or blog – trying to suck them into reading the email. Believe it or not, boring (but descriptive and concise) email subjects are more effective than “exciting” or “attention grabbing” ones.

3. Don’t attach unnecessary files

While the days of people having email accounts with only a few megabytes of storage are largely over, not everyone has broadband internet or unlimited account space.

When sending emails to members, whether a personal reply to an individual member or a large bulk email to all members, make sure you only attach a file if necessary.

Ensure the file sizes are as small as possible. Don’t mail large video or sound files, and make sure the image files you’re sending have been re-sized to be smaller. Try to avoid sending files that are larger than 1mb in size unless absolutely necessary.

4. Don’t write in CAPITALS, use red text or underline

These days, using All-Caps indicates that the writer is “shouting”. A member reading an email with ALL CAPITAL THROUGHOUT IT may think that the writer is shouting, expressing anger, frustration or being aggressive. Do not all-capitals to emphasise a point. If you must emphasise something, use italicised text.

Similarly, use of red text or underline to emphasise something can be easily misunderstood as aggression, anger or shouting. Many readers can mistake red text as conveying that they (the reader) have done something wrong, or are at risk of a penalty of some kind.

When writing an email, remember that the reader can’t hear your tone or see your expression. You want to make sure that what you are writing can’t be mistaken as anger or aggression.

5. Watch out for list fatigue

During the height of an industrial action or community campaign, you may be sending emails multiple times per week. Your members may start to grow tired of the constant updates and start not reading or deleting your emails. They know that they can read the next email tomorrow, rather than the one they get today.

This comes back to consistency. You should allow members to opt out of frequent email lists, or opt in to daily, weekly or monthly emails from the union. Activists and delegates for example are more likely to want to receive daily or weekly updates.

6. Check for grammar, spelling, formatting, emoticons, and abbreviations

Just like you would proof-read a hard-copy letter, make sure you read and re-read your emails. Check for grammar and spelling. Use your word processor’s or email client’s spell check function. Avoid using abbreviations (such as BTW = by the way or IMO = in my opinion).

Emails should convey professionalism from the union. Spelling mistakes, poor grammar and abbreviations can make your union seem amateur. Additionally, some abbreviations and emoticons, such as : -) for a smiley face, may not be understood by every reader. It could be misunderstood or confuse the reader.

Check your formatting. Make sure you have kept it simple, without excess HTML (that is, fancy formatting).

7. Don’t use a background colour or fancy fonts

Some email programs allow you to set a background colour for all your emails. Resist the temptation to use non-standard fonts. Stick to Arial, Verdana or Times.

Your emails will rarely appear to your reader as they do to you. Email programs vary quite widely in how they display an email. Many combinations of background colour and text colour could be unreadable. Similarly, if you use a non-standard font, your reader may not have it installed on their computer.

8. Track email open rates and clicks

For emails sent to large numbers of people, use an email program that allows you to track the number of opened emails, bounced emails and click-throughs on links.

The screen shot to the right shows a report from a recent small-scale email campaign that Creative Unions ran.

As you can see, despite the fact that we had 63 people who had opted in to receive updates from us, only 23% of them opened the email, and only 11% clicked on a link in the email.

As I noted in the introduction to this article, only between 13-27% of emails for the non-profit sector actually get opened. While unions may like to think that every member opens an email from their union, this is unlikely to be the case.

There are lots of programs and service providers that give you this option, and some of them are free. If your website was designed by a professional web design company, it is likely that they can offer you this service.

There are lots more tips for effective emails…

I’ll probably write again with some more ideas about how unions can better harness the power of emails.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Leave a comment.

Update (10.09.09)

A while ago, Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital, the company responsible for Barack Obama’s website, discussed the role of not-for-profit newsletters. His point is that e-newsletters are becoming less useful, and instead, the not-for-profit sector should focus on “short, simple, action-oriented advocacy emails”, aimed at getting readers to take a specific action:

When is the last time you read a nonprofit email newsletter?

Or rather, when is the last time you read a nonprofit email newsletter for an organization you don’t work for?

The point of my argument is simple: that for all the effort it takes to produce a high-quality e-newsletter – to write the articles, choose the graphics, format the html coding, ensure that the email is compatible in every email browser- the returns are typically pretty dismal.

But short, simple, action-oriented advocacy emails – like those used by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and so many of our clients – are both easier to produce, and create a larger, stronger and healthier email program. They’ve worked not only for the Obama campaign, but dozens of successful strategy engagement clients at BSD, including the American Red Cross,Wal-Mart Watch, Sundance Film Festival, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and many, many more.

I’m inclined to agree.